


Miracles For Safety

by Quoshara, speakmefair



Series: Reminders [2]
Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: Alcohol, Backstory, Canon Het Relationship, Coffee, Drugs, Future Fic, Hotel Rooms, Implied Relationships, M/M, Non-Linear Narrative, Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-08-07
Updated: 2011-08-07
Packaged: 2017-10-22 08:22:00
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 26,837
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/236057
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Quoshara/pseuds/Quoshara, https://archiveofourown.org/users/speakmefair/pseuds/speakmefair
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Arthur struggles with trust (mostly of himself), Eames is randomly protective, Dom is back on the jazz and fills in his sanity-cracks, Ariadne lives up to her name, Saito is a Tea Thief and is educated in the ways of caterpillars, Philippa tries to mother everyone, Yusuf is late to the game but has awesome explaining skills as well as the good drugs, Miles learns the hard way why you should not introduce small impulsive children to the Three Musketeers and Eames at the same time, and Starbucks is about to be under siege.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Miracles For Safety

_Those that love go out to sea upon a shattered plank, and put their trust in miracles for safety._

Arthur had arrived at LAX at fuck-awful-dark in the morning, rented a car and started the drive up the Pacific Coast Highway toward Dom's house. He could normally have gotten a flight to a closer airport and avoided the drive, but he'd left in such haste that he had little time to do anything beyond pack and send off a text message to Ariadne and, after much rewriting, _not_ to Eames (taking a long thought on the latter, debating an apology or something, then deciding that over the phone would be too chicken shit). Besides, the drive would do him good, let him get mentally settled and compose himself before he arrived at Dom's. Because if there was one person he didn't want in the middle of this, it was Dominic Cobb – and not just because Cobb would make it so much worse, but because they'd all spent too much time and effort getting Dom out of the stunning shitstorm that Mal's death had landed him in to reinvolve him in anything remotely complicated ever again. Arthur, who had spent _two years_ just keeping him from putting a gun to his head and pulling the trigger, figured he was probably first on the list of potential candidates for Least Likely To Worry Cobb With Anything Ever Again.

Besides, what was he supposed to say? "Yeah, you know how I was going to sort it out with Eames? Well, he kissed me, so I punched him in the face."

Dom, the new, improved, not in any danger of arrest Dom (the new-old Dom, Dom who these days was both as he used to be and yet with so much more experience of violence and disillusionment and care behind him all at once) would probably punch _him_ in the face if he said that, on the grounds of some things being too stupid to have to listen to.

Dom would probably have a point.

So, instead it was a long, dull, but soothingly mindless drive up the coast, to arrive days before he was actually expected, and hopefully by the day of the party Eames would have calmed down as well and they could get on with life, find some place to live that wasn't completely objectionable to both of them (because yes, even Arthur could tell when someone hated something, even if he wasn't good enough at people to know _why_ , and he could compromise, really he could), direct some of Ariadne's enthusiasm in a direction that was at least somewhat legal and then...then maybe he and Eames could figure out what they actually thought about each other. Felt about each other. Anything, he was past caring what, really, as long as _something_ broke the stalemate and he didn't wake up at quarter to three every damn morning in the kind of hyper-alert panic he usually associated with years-ago drill.

God, he so wanted to get all of it straightened out. But he seemed to actually suck at doing any of the straightening.

And he so wished the rest of the world wouldn't have been so quick to agree if he ever got up the courage to ask. After all, they'd volunteered the information before he even got round to asking, so God only knew what they'd say if he ever actually asked in a way that showed he really did want to know.

After all:

"You suck out loud at feelings," Ariadne had told him one afternoon, Eames safely under and hooked up while he practised his latest forgery. "I mean, you seriously, absolutely, totally, utterly, completely, truly suck. You need to _tell him_ , Arthur, he's running himself ragged trying to be what he thinks you need, and you're not helping at all. It's like watching a pair of cartoon lemmings."

"Mmff," Arthur said in vague agreement, not looking up from his notebook. Eames had doodled little sketches in every single corner, which was both expected and annoying, because for some reason all paper was fair game once it came into his reach. Also, he'd been drawing _eyebrows_ , why eyebrows?

" _Arthur_ ," Ariadne said, way too close, small hands pulling the notebook out of his grasp. "I'm going to use short words here, because you don't seem to understand how desperate this is. You two. Are driving me. Batshit."

He muttered something about it being a short trip. Not one of his best sallies by any means, but give him a break – he had other things on his mind. "What do you want me to do, Ari? Just look at him tomorrow and say 'Hey, Eames...want to fuck?' Because he'd be out the door so quick that even your head would spin."

"Yeah, oddly not so much with that. More 'I don't want you to stick around just because you're working with me and Ariadne, I want you here _for me_ ' would be way, way better." Ariadne's glare was impressive.

"If I said _that_ , he wouldn't just be out the door, he'd be out the door and gone for years," Arthur said, knowing it to be true. "Come on. Think about it. He still fucking flinches when you hug him and say 'see you tomorrow', what do you honestly think he's going to do if I talk about something way more personal?"

"Be relieved," Ariadne said bluntly, and then, exasperated, "Oh, _you_ come on. You set me up to be his friend, well guess what, here's a surprise, it worked! And I know I said I'd try and help, but you know what? I'm not so sure I'm on your side any more, Arthur." Her mouth tightened, and her chin went up. "Maybe I'm on his." She was obviously waiting for a reaction, but Arthur, lost in bewilderment, had no clue what kind she was looking for. He was pretty much convinced, though, that it wasn't the one he eventually managed.

"Wait," he said weakly, as she continued to stare meaningfully at him and he carried on being completely clueless as to what she was talking about. "Wait, what? There are _sides_ to this now?"

How the hell were there sides? What had he missed?

"Oh my _God_ , you're actually not faking. You really are this much of an idiot," said Ariadne in unfeigned disgust, threw his notebook back at him with surprising force, and stalked off to hook her headset into her laptop and probably Yusuf and a long muttered conversation that Arthur tried very hard not to listen into, but which was sometimes impossible to ignore when it got loud and clear and Ariadne glared directly at him while she said with perfect, crystalline diction things about 'impossible stupidity'.

Even thinking about it now, weeks later, made him want to bang his head against the steering wheel. Because honestly, _sides_ , as if it wasn't all crazy enough anyway.

No one seemed to understand the balancing act he was accomplishing with Eames. He wanted – damn, how he wanted – to tell Eames to stay, to live with him, to trust him and feel safe and...yeah, right, and the sky would turn pink and fluffy rainbow clouds would shoot out of his ass when Eames finally fucked him. Which was a completely off-putting thought, but still. Just as likely as anything remotely useful happening, so why shouldn't he indulge himself in horrible imagery?

Arthur knew that he sucked at feelings, and he knew that he sucked at relationships (not quite true, he fucking _excelled_ at the ending-it-right-now-for-no-good-reason part of relationships, he could take it or dish it out no problem, but as to the rest of it, well, that was where he was awful). He always had. It was so goddamned obvious (well, to everyone but Ariadne maybe, and by now probably, definitely, even to her) that he usually just didn't even bother to try. But right from the beginning, when Dom had first brought Eames into their little happy group, there had just been something about him that...No, looking back with regret had never been Arthur's style. Making plans was what he did best, researching and learning and following through.

He'd defeated the laws of _gravity_ , for fuck's sake. He could damn well overcome Eames's stupid hang-ups about staying put.

And that kind of determination so didn't explain, even to his own mind, how come he'd fled to California rather than deal with the fallout from his own moment of complete panic. Seriously. _Seriously_. What had possessed him?

**

It had been the demise of their third apartment in just over as many months and it had flooded, God damn it. And, Arthur was almost certain, Eames hadn't had anything to do with this one. Almost certain but not quite, and the not quite part was only because of the fact that his favorite pair of Gucci loafers had been destroyed and he knew how much Eames had hated them (and told him frequently and made fun of them constantly, and really that was totally the reason they were his favorite pair in the first place).

And they were back in a hotel, they were back in a fucking hotel, and all hotels ever made Arthur think of was the way Mal must have looked in those final seconds, one shoe already fallen to where her body would lie, her own private point man carving out her broken path, and he couldn't take one more time of blocking that out and being professional, because damn it, he'd stood two years' worth of not-thinking about that for Dom's sake, and more time after _that_ to make sure Eames wasn't going to run again, and he _couldn't do it any more_.

"No...that's it, Eames. No fucking hotels. Not one. More. Fucking. Hotel. Ever." Arthur was well aware that he sounded like a crazy man, but he was just so tired and frustrated that he just didn't care any more. "And no more plumbing problems and idiot landlords and hotel managers and people above and below and sideways and – and things that catch fire and stupid goddamn curtains! I mean it, Eames. No hotels. I don't care if we live in a warehouse...with giant fucking sci-fi rats...and...and...and have to sleep on deck chairs and eat take out for every meal. I refuse to go back into a hotel. I am not going to try and live in a hotel ever again, do you not _get_ how much I hate fucking hotels, here, am I not being clear? I don't care if the warehouse leaks or if–-"

And that was when Eames had kissed him.

Which was when Arthur had ignored all the thoughts of _finally_ and _yes_ and _please, thank you God_ and pushed out of his head every single longing to just _respond_ , and instead, fatally, he had let his hard-earned knowledge take over from what he wanted; he had let it annihilate everything else with the sure and certain fact that if he let this happen Eames really _would_ run, and he might never find him again and –

– and before he'd even finished going down that route, his hand hurt like a bastard because he'd just punched Eames squarely and unscientifically and, judging from Eames's expression and the amount of blood already streaming over his cupped fingers, painfully, straight in the face.

He bit his tongue and ran out the door before he was stupid enough to apologize and completely ruin everything. He ran his car nearly out of gas driving aimlessly around town, trying to plan his best course of action. He'd finally wound up at the reference library because yes, stereotypically, the smell of book binding and paper actually did tend to calm him.

It was another two hours before he went back to the warehouse and found Eames and Ariadne cuddled up in one of the deck chairs, sound asleep. It almost hurt to see them so relaxed together, not because he was jealous, but more...envious, envious because he knew he'd never been that relaxed with anyone in his life.

But when he went to clear up the debris of Ariadne's attempt to be comforting (why she'd thought icecream would be of any use he had no fucking clue, but he wasn't going to question it, because the fact that she knew better than him these days wasn't _in_ question), he realised Eames didn't look relaxed at all. He looked worn out and pained and miserable, and his nose looked like hell and there was still blood in the corner of his mouth, and Arthur wanted, more than anything, to wake him up and say _I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm a complete dick, can we start this one over?_

But instead he moved Ariadne's long hair away from Eames's face, and hoped he wouldn't wake up with the movement.

He didn't. Ariadne, however, did; Ariadne woke up and glared at him and managed to convey with narrowed eyes her deep desire to do Arthur incredible damage and her intent of fulfilling and satisfying that desire if he didn't get the hell out right then and there.

**

And so he had. He had packed his bag, jumped on a plane and arrived at LAX at God-knew-what in the should-be-banned hours of the morning, rented a car and started the drive up the Pacific Coast Highway toward Dom's house. Which, if his calculations were correct, and they most frequently were, he would be arriving at in about fifteen minutes.

He briefly considered calling ahead but it was still fairly early and he didn't want to wake up James and Philippa if he could help it. As much as he loved the kids, he wasn't sure he was up to cartoons and ghastly neon colored cereal and horsey-back rides that morning.

He was also pretty sure Dom would kill him if he started that little scenario off before it got to a decent-human-being sort of time of the day. And honestly? Dom was probably going to end up killing him anyway, so having his last hours on the earth free from frightening new childhood accessories seemed like a wonderful plan.

So instead of calling, he just went around to the back and used his key on the kitchen door. Miles, not surprisingly, was already there, drinking coffee and working the crossword puzzle.

"Arthur." Miles stood to greet him with a smile, always glad, these days, to see any of Mal and Dom's friends. It was oddly jarring when compared to so many of Arthur's memories of him from the days before Saito had worked his magic, when all he had to offer anyone was endless unhappiness and a bleak, unhelpful kind of resignation to Dom's eventual fate. Miles being pleasant was strangely unnerving, but it still wasn't unwelcome, and Arthur supposed that repeated exposure to his new role as kindly paternalistic figure would help him become accustomed to not being frowned at or sighed over – but somehow he couldn't imagine it. Miles was _always_ fucking scary, no matter what role he'd decided to play for the next few days. "We weren't expecting to see you for another few days at least."

"Well, there was an accident with broken pipes at our apartment building, so rather than check into a hotel, I thought I'd come down early and bum a bed off of Dom for a few days." The most believable stories were the ones that held closest to the truth, he'd learned that much over the years. Not that he was particularly hopeful that he wouldn't be seen through – but at least this way his luck might hold enough that he would be seen through _eventually_ rather than immediately, and hopefully, please, God, not by Miles. He didn't think he was _ever_ going to be able to cope with that conversation.

"Is there anywhere in Paris that boy hasn't wrecked yet?" Miles enquired mildly, and it was so incongruous that Arthur took over half a minute to realise he was talking about _Eames_ , because seriously, wrong word-usage or what, and this from a professor.

"Hopefully _your_ apartment," Dom said from the doorway, with a slight bite to his words that suggested Miles's avuncular 'I am a harmless elderly don' act was wearing a little thin. It was good to know Arthur wasn't the only one finding it hard to deal with Miles's brand-new approach to relationships with people he'd until recently openly despaired of.

"Good morning, Dominic," Miles, impervious to any undertones, or more likely ignoring _all_ undertones, went back to his puzzle with a chuckle. "There's coffee in the pot. Have some. Please."

Dom snorted, "Good morning, Miles. Hello, Arthur. Coffee for you? Juice? Tea?" He stopped moving rather abruptly, as if his wires had been cut, and Arthur realised this was the end of Dom's first-thing just-got-up momentum, and he might well have gone back to sleep where he was.

"Coffee's fine," Arthur answered the animated corpse that had just replaced waking-world Dom, then moved to the counter to take out cups and pour for himself and, after a moment's thought, for somnambulist Dom as well, because even after so long nothing had changed about the place, nothing was even in a different part of the kitchen, and so it was as familiar as breathing to move around and find what he needed. All of it was _the same_ – all of it, other than Mal's absence.

Dom, though – despite Mal's empty, black hole lack of presence, Dom was still the most familiar of it all, in a ratty old t-shirt and sweatpants, bleary-eyed and his hair falling into his face and nowhere near ready to look at the day yet. And Arthur hadn't seen him like that in _years_ , even at his worst, poleaxed by grief, he had never looked this much of a mess, so why it should seem like the dearest and most home-like thing he'd looked at in what felt like forever, he had no idea.

He knew why, though, really. It might have been years before, it might have been from a time when Mal was alive and Eames wasn't convinced nothing good should ever be his and Arthur still thought it would all last forever, but that was how Dom had looked in the mornings during that heady time of innovation and experimenting; the days when he had no reason to achieve functionality when he first got up and just found the nearest warm body to lean on before someone fed him caffeine; draped himself over Arthur (who tried very hard not to hit him at first and then found out it made no difference when he did, so gave up worrying about it)or Eames (who was completely scathing about the whole thing verbally and in actuality was completely and oddly untroubled by the invasion of his physical space) or Mal (who was the best of all of them at evading him first thing, probably a benefit of prolonged exposure in the days before Dom had other victims available to him) or, when abandoned by cruel people who wanted to get on with their own mornings, the counter; and hardly opened his eyes when whoever _wasn't_ acting as his upright bed frame – usually Mal, genius zombie-evader that she was – pushed a coffee mug into his hands and rescued his latest prop from his attempt to sleep standing up.

So, in Mal's place, or in place of Mal (that sounded a bit better in the caverns of his aching head) Arthur shoved the coffee cup into Dom's hands, "Go sit down, would you? I'm not picking you up if you topple over."

"What?" Dom blinked and mumbled taking a sip of the too-hot coffee. "Oh, yeah...let's go into the living room."

Arthur was fairly impressed Dom remembered he _had_ a living room, let alone the words for it. Obviously kids had improved chances of coherency-on-waking – if not chances of movement, because having achieved a full sentence, Dom just stood there and clutched his coffee and let his eyes start to close again.

Miles didn't even look up from the crossword as he laughed quietly. "Left, right, left, right," he said to the paper.

"Murgh, sorry, yeah," Dom agreed, and shuffled zombie-like to the living room and the couch.

So they sat, not talking, drinking coffee, Arthur enjoying the view out of the French windows and Dom blinking hugely, like doing it would eventually allow his eyes to remain open.

"You're early." Dom finally said.

"Our pipes blew up. There was a flood."

"Oh...m'kay..."

Arthur stifled a laugh. Dom's ability to get up, say something precise and appropriately themed and usually amusing, and then fall promptly into a coma, had never failed to make him laugh at its pure surreal humour – and at him – in the old days, and apparently it hadn't lost its entertainment value one iota.

 _Darling Dom, you are such an owl,_ Mal would say – and Arthur went into his own middle-distance headspace, remembering that, because _Jesus_.

Mal and Eames, picking up each other's phrases and making them their own. Cher, love, amant, darling, chéri, the pair of them using casual endearments as easily as Mal touched (not Eames, though, not back then, you had to be the one to move towards him if you wanted a response, and that hadn't been something anyone had ever needed to wait for demonstrative Mal to notice, and Dom had somehow known it from the beginning, and Arthur, fuck, Arthur hadn't realised that kind of important point until it was too late to start), moving words like caresses through the air, little syllables that felt as though they touched you as their sound passed by.

It was a visceral pleasure that Arthur missed more than he ever thought he would. Now when Eames used the words they had a bit of sarcasm underlying them that cut in ways that such things always could. But still, the right tone, the right degree of breathiness in Eames's voice and Arthur was lost, his libido ramping up to full speed in a heartbeat. Not that he'd ever let Eames know that.

Arthur gave himself a mental shake, looking over at Dom. He had apparently given up all attempts at consciousness and was turned and draped across the back of the couch, half-empty coffee cup dangling from one hand.

Arthur looked at him with a kind of desperate, helpless affection, the type Dom had always inspired in people, even carefully-impervious Eames in the early days after Dom had brought him back to the house in the company of a stolen PASIV, Eames charmed out of his hard military façade (charmed out of the lie, for it was really the gangster, the conman, the hard man façade that Dom had been looking past, Arthur learned as time went on) into surprisingly gentle treatment when Dom gravitated towards his warmth just as Ariadne did now.

Arthur, colder and naturally harder than any of Eames's real-life forgeries had ever managed, shook him awake with a hand rougher than he meant it to be, and considered it justice when Dom flailed at him crossly and nearly brained him with the empty mug.

"Shit, Dom!"

"Arthur? Sorry...sorry." Dom sat up straighter. "When did you get here?"

"I've been here nearly an hour, Dom. We had coffee, remember?"

"We...Oh, yeah." Dom laughed. "Guess I need some more."

"I would say so, yes."

"Uncle Arthur!!!"

"Oh, God..." Dom groaned in misery.

"Coffee, Dom," Arthur said firmly, just before James knocked all his breath out of him by launching himself over the top of the sofa straight into his stomach. He was quite glad he didn't have enough oxygen to talk after that, because he was pretty sure what he wanted to say was on the list of things Dom didn't want his kids repeating. "Hi, James," he croaked eventually.

"I'm not James," James announced, which was a bit more than Arthur's brain could handle. "I'm the Duke a' Bucks an' ham. Like green eggs only better ones."

"The who now?" Arthur glanced over to Dom with a frown. He thought he might be able to hazard a guess at what James had just said, but it _didn't make any sense_.

"The Duke of Buckingham." Dom translated, and huh, Arthur had been right, and yet it didn't help at all to have found that out, because no, it still made zero sense, and not just because Arthur was starting to feel as brain-dead as Dom had been seconds earlier. "Miles watched the Three Musketeers with them yesterday, and James decided that since the Duke was blond and he is blond that he had to be the Duke instead of a Musketeer."

"Of course he did." He supposed that was a kind of explanation, even if it wasn't a very helpful one, but sometimes (times like this, which no-one else seemed to have any difficulty with and yet were completely _nonsensical_ to sane members of the human race, and if Arthur ever met anyone else in that happy state, he was quite sure they would agree with him) Arthur thought Miles might well be responsible for every burgeoning insanity the world ever supplied his life with. He knew, on a more rational and less confused level of his brain, that this was unfair, but then again, he had a small boy squashing vital and necessary organs such as his lungs, informing him that he was a long-dead and mostly fictional character. Which was definitely Miles's fault, so maybe he wasn't being unfair at all.

"Hi," said a quieter voice from the sofa arm, and Arthur looked sideways at a beaming Philippa. "We missed you."

James nodded agreement, and, taking after his father in the worst possible way, extracted the last vestiges of air from Arthur's lungs by bringing his knees together in a kind of frog-like jump.

"All right, my lord Duke, that's enough." Dom stood and lifted James off of Arthur. "Daddy needs more coffee," which was probably the understatement of the decade, Daddy needed a caffeine IV put in was more like it, "and you need an airplane ride."

"Yay!!" James yelled as Dom lifted him up and carried him off toward the kitchen. Dom made a face that suggested he was no longer in possession of both his eardrums, and that noise perforation hurt more than he’d expected.

Philippa moved into the spot that Dom had vacated, scooting closer to Arthur.

"If James is the Duke, who are you? Constance?" Arthur tried to smile at her, but children had never been one of his strong points. They had a tendency to be too unexpected and damp.

"No. I'm just Pip," she answered with a smile and leaned into him.

"Yes, of course you are," Arthur agreed, feeling her light weight against his arm with a sudden rush of strange tenderness, because Philippa had been the first baby he had ever picked up, the first glimpse of true innocence he had ever had, and now she was a person and not just a tiny personality waiting to emerge, she was a small girl with a claim to her own naming and long blonde hair in an unravelling sleep-braid, and Mal, Mal the chemist, the creator of improbable catalysts, would never, ever know what would become and was becoming of the impossible, perfect life she had created here.

And 'just Pip' yawned a morning yawn and smiled again, "Are you going to stay here, Uncle Arthur? You can sleep in my bed. James has bunk beds in his room but I think you're too tall."

"I wouldn't want to put you out of your bed, Philippa." And he really, really didn't want to even contemplate the nightmare concept of trying to sleep in a child's bunk bed. "I think," (dear God, how he _hoped_ , because otherwise he was going to have to go back to Paris and face Eames, well before he was ready, and probably with Ariadne still homicidal, and that all just – no.) "I think your dad meant for me to stay in the guest room." He was pretty sure of that, actually, despite his momentary panic over bunk beds and James. Dom might be scatter-brained in his own special right, but that didn't mean he had become suddenly inclined to put politeness over his own preferences, and his feelings about Miles had never, ever included them being able to share living space for more than a day without potential violence simmering beneath the surface of all their interactions. They needed substantial chunks of time out of each others' company for anything like civility to be maintained over lengthy periods.

"Oh, that'll be nice. It has its own television and everything." Pip, still trying to make what she evidently considered to be grown-up style conversation, and reassuringly unaware of his thought processes – and wasn't it sad that he was reduced to being comforted by the thought that at least a small child couldn't read his mind? – looked up at him for a moment, as if studying him. "Would you like some more coffee? I'm allowed to bring it to you if daddy pours."

Arthur carefully stopped himself from saying the first (and second, and third) things that occurred to him with regard to whether Dom was allowed to pour anything hot yet unsupervised, worked out that Miles was there anyway to stop anything too appalling happening in case of sudden-onset sleep, and nodded. "Yeah, yes, thanks, that – yes."

Philippa smiled at him as though he'd just given her some kind of present, and bounced off to the kitchen. Arthur leant back into the depths of the sofa, and tried to unwind.

Maybe his spur of the moment decision was a good one after all. He'd be here, and Eames would have time to...decompress...and maybe forgive him. Or maybe Eames would just decide to write the whole thing off as a bad deal, pack everything and go back to Mombasa – or worse, go somewhere where not even begging Yusuf for help would stand a chance of tracing him, because Arthur now knew from experience that if Eames wanted to disappear, _really_ wanted to disappear, he was a world-class expert at it, he could avoid them all, he could probably even vanish from Saito's multi-corporation eyes – and Arthur would have to just – go back to being numb inside, he supposed, for as long as _this_ absence lasted. Which wouldn't have any kind of miracle ending brought about by money and an impossible challenge and Saito's string-pulling, because that was a chance they'd all used up. It would be like staring into a black hole, some kind of opposing infinity, even without knowing just how bad it would feel; even without experience telling him how fucking awful it was all going to be if he really had managed to undo all his work of _months_ , and convince Eames that running – that _vanishing_ – was the only option left.

The problem was that however hard he tried, however important he knew it was to try and maintain rationality about this and not over-react or assume the worst, he couldn't quite bring himself completely towards one or stop the other. He couldn't force himself to keep up coherent, cohesive thought, because to do that he had to look sensibly at what might actually happen, and consider (sanely and reasonably and without doing something like picking up his phone and just _begging_ to be forgiven for his incredible moment of braindead stupidity) how to survive another time like before.

He'd thought it was bad back then, he really had, but miserable as it had been, there had been first of all Philippa, and then James, and then dear _God_ , Mal's swan dive, which had lifted things into a realm of terrible that he'd never even suspected life could withstand – and then after that, what he wanted had stopped existing, never mind stopped mattering, because there had been Dom to take care of and bully into living, and the days had started to blur into one when there wasn't anything specific to be working on, and through it all, like some kind of horrible, psychotic punctuation, there had been frenetic, terrible jobs to distract him, and really, it hadn't left him much time to sit down and consider what it would be like to know that this was _it_. But it was, Arthur knew, this time he knew it absolutely was, because if Eames left now, if he disappeared _now_ , there would be nothing to distract him, nothing to stop him from losing himself, no-one who needed him around for anything more than work.

It was a terrifying thought.

**

Even before the 'Great Punch-out' – and God, why did his brain have to categorize all his insanity? _Why?_ – Arthur had begun to feel like he was fighting some kind of never-ending domestic battle with Eames and really, even with the amazing amount of money that the Fischer job had netted them, he wanted to be investing it and spending it on luxuries, not paying off damages and disgruntled landlords. He'd gotten them into 'homes' as quickly as he could each and every time, not ever making them stay in a hotel for more than a night or two at any given time, but none of it seemed to be helping. Eames still stalked through the place like a tiger on the hunt...or maybe like a stray cat that was waiting for the kick...but either way he was something furry with teeth and claws and visible mistrust that hovered on the verge of a display of violence, and Arthur hadn't been able to figure out how to get him to relax and stop showing them. And, of course, there had always been that terror in the back of his mind that Eames would choose flight over fight.

Dom was spectacularly unhelpful, when asked, his point being that he'd never known what to do before to get Eames to stay put, and for the sake of his recovering sanity, he had absolutely no intention of starting to try from a continent away. It was a _good_ point, but it didn't make Arthur feel any better at all, because if Dom wanted to stay out of it, wasn't that, just maybe, a hint that he should stop trying as well? Only that wasn't what Dom had said, and it wasn't what Ariadne seemed to think, and Arthur was left in the completely unenviable position of either having to call Yusuf, who would be even _worse_ at offering advice, since he had only known Eames at a point in time when he was choosing to stay somewhere, and so wouldn't be able to understand how this was a problem, or calling in a favour from Saito, which was – odd, even as a consideration, because what the hell did Saito know about any of it anyway?

The answer, of course, turned out to be _just about everything_. Which was really very unnerving.

"Arthur, I have been expecting your call." As always, Saito seemed to have been doing just that and nothing else, which was, of course, ridiculous. The man had a multi-billion dollar operation to control, he did not, emphatically, wait for anyone to call him, let alone Arthur.

Arthur very very carefully removed all traces of scepticism from his mind, let alone his voice, because he was fairly sure Saito could actually _read brainwaves_ , before he said anything else, and then managed to say in nice, neutral tones, "That's – kind of you."

"No, not kind," Saito denied it, "just, as I have said, expected. I have heard from all of your colleagues over the last several months. There was only you to complete the list."

Well, at least that actually made sense, which was more than the mental image of Saito sitting by the phone expecting it to ring for no other reason than that Arthur was _losing his mind_ had managed. Arthur wondered for a brief moment if in fact he had somehow been offensive by _not_ calling before at least one other member of the team, and dismissed that line of thinking as unprofitable and leading nowhere but tying his own mind in more knots than he'd already managed.

He couldn't help wondering why Yusuf had called, though – even if there was enough grounds for speculation there to keep him occupied for weeks, and he was fairly sure he didn't really want to know, it was still a deliriously awful moment of imagining Saito paying for Yusuf's drug experiments.

"I'm not actually certain why I'm calling now," Arthur admitted. "Ariadne's reported on your health, Dom on your acceptance of being out of Limbo...I just..."

"You need advice, perhaps?" If it had been anyone but Saito, Arthur might have attributed the sound of his voice to brotherly concern. "You have all been through so many changes since I saw you last."

If _changes_ was the appropriate word, Arthur thought he might have to inform whoever complied Webster's Dictionary these days (which presumably wasn't anyone called Webster, and God, his brain was a terrible place) that they'd got the definition wrong. Unless changes suddenly meant things guaranteed to leave you feeling as though you'd been caught in a vacuum cleaner. On the other hand, he did need advice, just perhaps not the sort Saito had on offer, since he was fairly sure it was impossible to buy Eames out of his incomprehensible moods. "Maybe?" he ended up saying, out of a fog of giving up.

"Ah..." A small interjection and then silence. Arthur wasn't sure if he was expected to continue, or if Saito was thinking.

"I—"

Apparently it was the latter, as Saito interrupted him, "You need some place to live. Some place...interesting?"

"No...I mean yes, but—"

"—But there is more to it than that?" Saito continued. "Do not look for perfection, Arthur. It is seldom necessary and often off-putting."

Arthur narrowed his eyes at the phone. If Saito really _could_ read brainwaves, he would be able to tell that he was wishing long, lingering deaths on both Dom, who apparently couldn't keep his mouth shut about anything even when purportedly checking up on someone's well-being, and Saito himself, for pulling the mystic card when he had no. Fucking. Right.

Except for how huh, he actually did, because Arthur had called _him_ , and –

His brainwaves might not have been audible, but he was damn sure the thump of his head onto the very hard back of his chair was, since Saito's next question was a very bland "Did that help?" and Arthur was fairly convinced he didn't mean his advice, because Saito never questioned himself.

"No." Arthur replied, almost as blandly. "But yes, I do, once again, need to find us some place to live and since everyone seems to hate what I'm choosing I thought you might be able to suggest a broker that operates globally...someone who might understand our...lifestyle."

Saito appeared to be getting a cold, or possibly (and more probably) was trying very hard not to laugh, for some peculiarly Saito-ish reason, because his voice was a little constricted when he said, "I think I may know some people, yes. But it will, of course, take time."

 _Of course it will_ , Arthur mouthed at the phone, because God, why was it everything he ever got involved with which included Saito revolved around either time he was going to have to create, or time that was running out, or time that was just completely screwed? "Right," he said aloud, a bit dismally. "Yeah, okay, well. Thanks."

"You are welcome," Saito said and then there was silence, as if one of them, or Hell, maybe both of them, was waiting for the other to continue. "Arthur, a good home must be made, not bought...but do not expect either home or house to be the answer to anything."

"And...okay. Right. Thanks. Again." Arthur hung up then, because what the fuck was that even supposed to mean?

It seemed he even sucked at calling in favours, because when Saito had pointed out just how much he owed everyone for keeping him on the right side of sanity and limbo-inspired death, there had been several blissful, heady moments in which Arthur had let himself contemplate just what he could do with the power of a multi-billionaire businessman who _bought airlines to keep life tidy_ behind him.

All he actually seemed capable of, though, was confusing himself even more than he had been to start with, and he was pretty sure that didn't really qualify as cashing in on something owed.

More worryingly, he was also pretty sure that it was exactly what Saito _did_ consider it, which meant he was using up his IOU slips on cryptic and unsettling messages that didn't help him in the slightest.

He was the worst manipulator ever.

**

The rest of the week prior to the party was a bit of a blur, filled with not enough sleep, Arthur jumping every time his phone rang and not sure whether it was from hope or panic, and a small girl-child, who had somehow decided that Arthur needed coddling. She fetched him coffee, which Dom was probably making pots of from a morbid curiosity as to how much Arthur could consume before he became a living example of a terminal caffeine overdose. She gave him her stuffed animals to sleep with. She turned on Bugs Bunny cartoons because 'they're older, like you, and you might remember watching them when you were a kid and laugh'.

But he didn't, he couldn't – laugh, that was. Arthur hadn't been much for cartoons as a kid and being force-fed them as an adult was more than a bit stultifying, but he couldn't disappoint that little blonde pixie-face any more than he could Ariadne's long lashes and a sorrowful glance upwards through them.

"She thinks you need a mother...very badly," was Dom's reply when Arthur had asked why Philippa seemed to have adopted him. "Do you?"

"I think she's a bit young for that kind of transference," Arthur said without thinking, and flinched at the same time Dom did when the words hit air. "Shit. Sorry. I mean, no?"

" _Nice_ , Arthur," was all Dom said, which was kind of good of him, considering. "No would have been just fine, by the way."

"I think I got out of the filtering habit," Arthur said apologetically. "Which is weird, because that's all I've been doing in Paris."

"Filtering?" Dom looked puzzled, but he was obviously amused as well, in some kind of deeply private way that Arthur wasn't quite sure he understood. "Arthur, you filter everything. Your life is one big filter most of the time, and the rest of us just search around looking for the way through. "

"I don't—"

"Yeah, actually. Sorry, but you do." Dom told him. "But that's okay. The business we're in, we need a bit of filtering to keep us being ourselves."

"Yeah, right. Says the man who hasn't been living with Ari and Eames these last months. Seriously, they never filter anything, it's like –" He stopped dead, because Dom was laughing, private amusement giving way to something less deep-seated, something lighter, more surface-passing, easier. His hand was covering his mouth and he was mostly silent about it other than a few swallowed sounds, but he was definitely laughing. Arthur stared at him. "What?"

"Uh. Yeah. Sorry." Dom flapped his free hand vaguely through the air, not helping at all. "Yeah, I think, uh, I think we've got different ideas about what filtering means, here. Heh. Give me a second, sorry." He drew a deep breath, rubbed his hands over his face, and emerged mostly serious if still amused. "I'm not talking about what people say without really thinking, so much. You did that about Pip, and you're right, but it still doesn't mean you're not on a filter – God, that word's lost all meaning in my head now, never mind – because if you weren't on a filter, you'd've said something a hell of a lot worse that would have been just as true and left me wondering whether I could stand talking to you for a while. But you didn't. Because, you know. Filter. It's good!" he added hastily. "I mean, it's a good thing, it is, having one's great, but you – I think it's – uh, maybe you've got too much of one? Because it seems like it stops you from letting anything useful through sometimes, as well as keeping all the crap out."

Arthur frowned, "Are you saying I'm narrow-minded or...?"

"No, no. Not that. You couldn't do the job if you were. It's more like...you're so in control that you ignore things that you can't be in control of..." Dom shook his head. "I don't know if I'm making any sense."

 _"So, this sofa –"_

 _"Couch, Eames."_

 _"—thing you've got going on –"_

 _"Don't worry about it."_

Oh yeah, Dom was making sense. Horrible amounts of sense. "You are, I think." Arthur managed a smile. "Not very flattering sense, though."

"Yeah, I wasn't trying with the flattery," Dom agreed. "Thing is, maybe you need to push away the stuff you're never going to be in control of a little less, so you can at least think about them. Because, uh, I know I'm not the one to be telling you what a bad idea avoidance is, but. Maybe I am, you know, maybe I am the one to tell you, because I can definitely tell you from having tried it, it never ends up any place good."

"I don't think I'm avoiding though, Dom, it's more like...restraining." Arthur continued. "Not that it really matters, since the results or non-results seem to be about the same."

"Hmmm...Well, maybe if a third party stepped in? Someone who's pretty much neutral in the whole relationship department? Or at least as far as your relationships are concerned."

"Oh, yeah, because that's worked so well with Ariadne," Arthur said bitterly.

"Wait, you're –"

" _No_ , I –"

"Oh thank fuck, because seriously, she's not –"

"Dom, no, I mean I got her involved –"

Dom stepped back and put his hands in the air as though Arthur was threatening him at gunpoint. "Okay. Uh. Can we start again on this?" he asked plaintively. "Because right now you've got me really hoping I _don't_ understand."

"What? No!" Arthur rushed to explain. "I asked her to make friends with him because then he'd have a reason to stay."

"You used Eames's protective streak to keep him around?" Dom shrugged. "Okay, that's not a bad idea, really. I used it with you, hey? So, tried and tested."

"Yeah, except now I feel guilty for manipulating him, because that's what started this whole fucking thing in the first place."

Dom scowled at him, and Arthur backtracked. "Okay, no, it didn't, but what the fuck did I think I was playing at, trying to manipulate Eames, of all people, I mean he can buy and sell any fucking persona he wants, he doesn't need to be pushed into stuff without knowing, he –"

"You seem pretty sure he doesn't know," Dom said blandly, looking at Arthur with his eyebrows raised. "So I have to ask, are we talking about the same guy? Because I'm pretty sure that if we are, he worked out what you were doing ages ago."

Arthur sagged, "Which is why it's really not working..."

"That would be it." Dom could be patient, when he needed to be, Arthur had forgotten that. It cost him a ridiculous effort to show it, but he genuinely _felt_ it, which made him a rarity. "Arthur, you've got to remember one thing, while you figure this out. If Eames has stopped running, it's because he wants to stop, not because you've tricked him into it. He might not want to stay in the set-up you've found him, but I don't think he wants to keep going any more, either. You gave him the excuse he needed, the _perfect_ excuse, guilt-free, because he can say it's not something he'd have chosen for himself, and that he's doing it all for someone else – and Ariadne at least appears on the surface to need it, even if the truth is she could buy and sell us all. And you know – if he runs again, it won't be on you."

Arthur sighed. "Yeah, about that? This time, it really fucking will be."

Dom's look of patience turned into a narrow-eyed look of doom. "I don't want to ask this," he said warily, "and I can't believe I _am_ asking this, but, um, what did you do?"

"I sort of pnchmnthfs..." Arthur muttered. He was already ashamed that he'd done it, especially since he really – _fuck, really_ – had just wanted to kiss Eames back, and then take everything that followed. It had been so long that he barely remembered what the hell followed but damn it, he would have figured it out. Like riding a bicycle, right?

Unfortunately, Dom's ability to translate muttering seemed to be rather like riding a bicycle, too, because he groaned. "In a dream?" he asked hopefully. "No. You wouldn't be hiding here if it was in a dream. Right. Er. Why, um, why are you hiding here and why do you still have all your teeth and oh God, you didn't cause some kind of permanent damage, did you? I mean you didn't hit him so hard he doesn't know you hit him or, Jesus, did you hospitalise him and leave him with Ariadne?"

"Thanks a fucking lot for your faith in me, Dominic," Arthur said, unjustifiably irritated. "No. No, no, and no. Er, well. I did kind of leave him with Ari, but I think she wanted to kill me, so."

"As well she might." And oh _God_ , Dom was wearing his 'Disappointed Dad' face and it was a killer. No wonder his kids were mostly very well behaved. "And I probably would have helped her. What were you thinking? I thought the whole point of all this was that you wanted Eames to stay...with you. Wasn't it?"

"Yes," Arthur said snippily. "Which he wouldn't have if I'd kissed him back. You know he wouldn't have, don't even try arguing with – Dom, stop fucking laughing or I'll punch _you_ , I swear to God –"

"You punched him because he _kissed you_?" Dom wheezed. "Oh wow. Okay, you win. Self-sabotage forever, destroying your own life for the win, God, I can't even come up with anything sane, fucking hell, Arthur."

"Yes. Thank you. I already know I'm an idiot. Thank you." Arthur turned and moved to the French windows, leaning on the door frame and looking out toward the ocean. It was no comfort, the waves seemed to be laughing at him as well.

"Oh, good, I'm glad you worked that much out," Dom said incredulously from behind him. "So let me get this straight. He kissed you. You punched him – I'm assuming in the face, because this is you, it's the best way ever to avoid possible talking, getting hit in the face, well done on the choice there – you punched him in the face and then you basically ran away because you're scared of _Ariadne_?"

Arthur thumped his head onto the doorframe. "You're not helping, Dom..."

"I'm not trying to, heh. I just want to make sure I got the details, because this is surreal, wow. Hah. Wow. All that time, all that effort, and then you – wow. Just wow. Also, you're _scared of Ariadne_ , and I am never going to let you live this down."

"I am not afraid of Ariadne." Arthur said through clenched teeth. "I just wanted to give Eames some time to cool down." There was a moment of silence from Dom, for which Arthur was extremely grateful. "And I just didn't know what to do. I fucked up. I guess. Or not. Who knows?"

"Arthur," Dom said very carefully, "you know _you're_ going to have to tell him you worked it out, don't you? You have to tell him you know what he and Mal were trying to do, and you need to tell him you know what's wrong with him. Because that last bit, the fact he hasn't kept it hidden as well as he thinks, the way no-one was ever conned into thinking he was an unreliable bastard – well, I mean he _is_ , obviously, but not in the way he wants us to think — the fact that the three of us always knew why he ran then, and you and I know why he's still thinking about it now, if telling him that comes from me –"

"Oh God, no, Dom, whatever else you tell him, even if you end up being the one to say we know he and Mal fucked up, you can't tell him –"

"I know, I know I can't, God. I'm not that brain fried. I mean, I want to, but I know. But you? You really, really need to. I'm telling you now. This needs to stop. You've tried it your way, and it's a disaster. So now you do what I said from the beginning, and you _tell him_."

Dom was right, as much as it pained Arthur to admit it. He just had no idea how to tell Eames. It wasn't like he could just say, "I know why you left. I know what you and Mal were trying to do, and I know what you think happened, but really, it didn't work. No matter what you think, it didn't work. Trust me," because that one good punch in the face, no matter how surprised Arthur had been, had torn down a lot of hard-won trust.

He was so screwed.

**

When they got off the plane after everyone was finally sure of being a) awake and b) not in any danger of arrest (which, although that probably hadn't been among Ariadne and Saito's concerns, had definitely come somewhere on Arthur's list, had probably been top of Dom's, and Eames was pretty obviously selecting Most Plausible Alias no matter what happened – Yusuf, unknown quantity of Zen mastery, would just have to take his superlative calm and fend for himself) it was like looking at a different world.

Not just because he could see how it was through Dom's wondering, disbelieving eyes (and God bless Ari for moving through the queue on one side of him, a distant but solid totem as she failed completely not to keep looking at him, meeting his quick glances around him with reassurance in her steady demeanour), but because the world _had_ changed – for Dom, for Ariadne, for shaken Saito, who was trying so hard to wait until he was alone for his own private moment of disbelieving meltdown, for Fischer, who had become so impossibly dear to them all, if only for what he had cost them, for proud and amused Yusuf, who looked at them all with such distant certainty in his own achievements – and God, for Eames, who looked for the first time since Arthur had been forced to meet him again in Paris (he wasn't thinking of the job they'd done together before that, he was _never_ going to think about it again of his own volition) like the man Dom had brought back to his and Mal's home with the military's – _acquired_ – PASIV.

He looked calm, but not as passive as he had when they'd begun this job. Tired out, and God, he didn't suit black at all, it made him looked washed out and scruffier than ever, but under all that he looked relaxed and confident in a way all his posturing had never managed, and – had he just _winked_ at Ariadne, disregarding all the warnings about ignoring each other, and surprised a giggle out of her? Of course he had. Arthur almost had to chuckle at that, and then wished, suddenly and inappropriately, that he had been on the receiving end of that flickered look. It had been so long, so incredibly long, since Eames had teased him with anything but hard-edged sarcasm and bolts of cutting mockery that all too often left him feeling torn all the way through – not that he'd ever have let it show.

But it was more than just teasing, more than breaking the rules for the hell of it and because like all of them, Eames was on a high of success and _always_ found a way to show that which involved other people's blood pressure going through the roof, it was so much more than that, and Arthur knew it because he was now the point man in a truth that had once been a vague joke born of military vocabulary and too much wine, and he _noticed_ things.

He noticed how Eames tracked the flight board, keeping an eye on Ariadne; glanced over at Saito once too often for it to be mere memorisation in progress; stood back from the moving lines to make sure Dom found a beaming Miles, and looked back at Ariadne once more, frowning a little. Eames, concerned for another's safety in the way he used to be, casual and waiting to be asked and so very much _there_ that Arthur ached with it, because long ago, in the days before Mal's death, he would catch that look in the hazel-pale eyes, and know it was aimed at him.

And the first germs of one of those famous, pernicious diseases, the beginnings of what might have proved to be the worst idea he'd ever had, began to come together in his mind.

Arthur took a deep breath and stepped forward, pulling the last of his baggage off of the carousel and then, quite obviously, letting his line of sight follow Eames's, "I'm worried about her, Eames. She's so..."

"Young?"

"Well, yes," Arthur conceded. "But I was going to say vulnerable...because she's going to want to continue delving into the dreamscape but she has no idea what kind of people are out there."

"No, well..." He didn't think Eames had heard him, not really, despite the fact he'd responded, and was convinced of it when he said out of nowhere, "Yeah, so what plans've you made, then?"

And Arthur hadn't known, he had suddenly realised he had no idea, because Dom was safe and the inception was done, and what _was_ he going to do, anyway?

"I –"

"Yeah, that's what I thought," Eames had said with sudden purpose, and got them both into a taxi, stopping off at a liquor store – 'Are you sure you need more alcohol?' the driver asked, and they both said vehemently ' _Yes_ ,' because no matter what they might seem like, ( _what_ fucking alcohol?) they definitely needed something – and paying the guy extra to wait while they got every godawful bottled mixed drink under the sun from the worst place Arthur had ever seen, at obscene prices that no longer mattered because Saito's money was sitting there, smug as Yusuf's expression, waiting to be spent.

They checked into the Beverly Wilshire, a two-bedroom luxury suite, complete with gourmet room service and a view, and as the sun went down they started to really drink. Tequila first, then rum drinks, and the horrible Kahlua-based things saved for last, working on the increasingly vague premise that it would be gentler if it came back up.

Arthur ended up out on the balcony with Eames, both of them by now on the contents of the minibar, and with their backs to the rails as Eames smoked and Arthur pretended he wasn't stealing drags every now and again, because God, he didn't smoke, not any more, he hadn't wanted to for years, and he wasn't about to start again now, and Eames didn't even flicker about it or laugh at him or offer a whole cigarette, just let Arthur take one from his fingers and hand it back.

"Dom'll be okay, you know?" he said once, head tipped back onto metal bars and staring at the neon-blurred sky.

"Yeah," Arthur agreed, and his throat ached from more than smoke and liquor. "Yeah, that's, that’s, I'm glad, yeah."

"So'll you." Eames had gone past vague slurring into already-forgotten half-coherency, the last stage of drunkenness before sleep.

"Yeah," Arthur said, not believing it, missing Dom's difficult, demanding presence already, and the sky blurred more.

"C'm'ere," Eames said hazily, stubbing his cigarette out on the thick strip between the bars. "'S a'right. Dom's fine, it's all good, you're fine, yeah?"

His arm was warm and clumsy and tired-feeling as it wrapped around Arthur's shoulders, Eames who was never the first to reach out, had never been capable of it, he had done so now, and he smelled of smoke and a thousand airports and Somnacin residue and too much to drink, and he was too warm and too sweaty and it was all fucking irritating even when Arthur should have been drunk beyond caring about that kind of thing, but it was still _Eames_ , and he was there, not running, not gone back to the picture-perfect life of a protected student or to a billion-dollar empire or to live with whatever inception could do to the mind, and he wasn't Dom with his shipwreck of a reputation to salvage and his kids and his grief, and he was there.

And Arthur, selfish and oddly sober, took that moment for all he could get from it, and let himself fall into being someone he thought he remembered knowing, remembered being, so very long ago.

"I'm going to have to look for some place to live," he said suddenly. He might not be as drunk as Eames, probably because dreamshare or no, there were only so many doses of Yusuf's concoctions anyone could take before things started to hit you like Dom's hallucinated trains, and Eames had been down deep enough to watch Fischer's inception take place, and before that he'd been going under on his own to practise forging Browning, and he had more drug-leftovers than any of them floating through his system, he shouldn't have been drinking, great job Arthur had done of watching Eames's back on this one, fuck, because God knew how the world felt to him by this point – but that didn't matter right that second, couldn't matter, because there was finding a way to get Eames to stay, to stop running, and Arthur hadn't followed it through yet, and he needed to know, before he let himself pass out, that he'd tried.

He wanted to try, but complexities and intricacies were long since gone from his grasp, and Arthur's brain, if not his body, his brain was still working on overtime, overdrive, it was doing that oddly random jumping from one subject to another, related but not directly, and he didn't want to follow any kind of plan, even if it was one he'd devised himself, he wanted to keep talking instead, because it was so long since he'd been able to feel like this, to be loose-thinking and random and miserable and determined and _himself_ , and it was fine, because Eames was never going to remember it, he probably wasn’t going to remember much past getting to the hotel, never mind anything else, "Yeah, yeah, I will, I'll have to find somewhere, because, you know, I'm gonna need somewhere better, more staying-power behind it, you know? Now that I'm not running all over the world behind Dom." It was an almost shocking thought. "I'm, yeah, fuck, I'm a bit tired of hotels, even ones as nice as this."

"God, yeah, 'n me too." Eames agreed. His eyes were nearly shut, and his mouth was slack, tired, half-open on the start of sleep-deep breathing. He looked beautifully, imperfectly real.

"You had – you _have_ a flat, though," Arthur said in confusion. "Like, in Mombasa, you’ve got a flat..."

Eames cracked his eyes open a little, glazed light-reflection glinting out of them. "Mm? Nah. Not so much. Rent by the week thing, I had, 's easier. Be nice to stay somewhere, though, yeah..." The side of his face creased in what Arthur knew was something trying to be a smile, and might have succeeded if he had been more alert. "Yeah, would be, would be nice, that. 'S good thoughts."

"Huh," Arthur said, and rolled his increasingly heavy head onto Eames's shoulder, too tired and slipped too far into honesty to censor what he said next. "You know, we could do that. Look after Ariadne, make sure she's okay, find somewhere in Paris for a little bit?"

Eames didn't say anything, apparently asleep, but when Arthur woke the next day, having somehow got himself to the couch, not that he could remember doing so, and feeling like several different kinds of living death and with a crick in his neck put there by some kind of demon, Eames was already awake and showered and looking his usual self (which was to say, scruffy and unshaven and hungover and a total mess, so who the hell was going to be able to tell the difference?) and he had the tickets ready.

"Can't let the girl go too much off the tracks, right?" he said casually, but it had been a start, it had been hope of a kind, and Arthur had grabbed at it.

Even though it was clear that whatever Eames was referring to, whatever it was he'd actually remembered, it wasn't one solitary thing about the half-coherent conversation they'd almost had on the balcony.

It was clear, because within a week of the flight out to Paris, Arthur was incredibly aware that if Eames _had_ remembered it, he would have been running again – and equally, nastily sure that he had just committed himself to fixing something that might well be more difficult to walk into than even two years' worth of dealing with desperate, lost, grieving Dom could have prepared him for.

**

The day of the party found Arthur tucked back into a corner under the stairs that led from Dom's yard down to the beach. It was a shaded place, not obvious from above, and just perfect for stretching out with a good book. And that was what Arthur was doing because he certainly was not hiding from Philippa and James, who had decided that he was to play some kind of monster bird in whatever festivities they and Miles had dreamed up for the evening's entertainment. He was also in no way hiding from Eames...except he kind of was. He'd left those text messages with his flight information and where he was going and everything...but there had been no reply. For all he knew Eames was already half-way back to Mombasa, enjoying drinks and an in-flight movie.

He tried to make himself not care. He was failing badly.

"Hi," said a voice above him, small enough for Arthur to think for one horrible moment that he had been discovered by Philippa. He blinked up into the sun, scrambling for excuses, and looked into Ariadne's worried face.

"Hi," he said, his mind going blank. "You're here."

"Yeah." Ariadne kicked at the grass tufts with her sandalled foot. "We, um, we all are."

"Oh." Arthur searched for something further to say. "That's good. How was your flight?"

Yes, he was brilliant, no doubt about it.

"Pretty crap," Ariadne said honestly. "I never knew I'd end up actually sitting on someone to get them to stay in, you know, _a moving plane_ , but apparently this is now my life. I blame you," she added gratuitously.

"You sat on Eames to..."Arthur slumped a bit. "You shouldn't have made him come, Ariadne. Not if it was that much of a struggle."

Arthur could almost see the cold, aloof expressions that were all Eames would gift him with, while he smiled and joked with everyone else. But he'd take them, take them and give back his own as if none of it mattered. Shit...

"Oh, no, he made us come," Ariadne said blithely. "He just doesn't do the calm thing."

Which was definitely true, so why Arthur felt as though he was being lied to in several different ways was beyond him.

"Also, I think Saito freaks him out," Ariadne continued. "You know, what with the 'I bought all the things' attitude, and there is just nothing ever phases him, and oh, yeah, he's here too."

"You brought Saito," Arthur said dazedly.

"No, I think Cobb invited him, and really he brought us, because of the plane thing."

"Oh." Somehow the thought that at least they hadn't had to drag Eames, kicking or under the effects of strong sedation, onto the plane seemed to be a positive sign. Right? "So why aren't you...up there?"

Because just because he had exiled himself was no reason for anyone else to miss the party. He'd sneak back up after James and Philippa had gone to bed and let Eames give him his whacks...and try his damnedest to salvage whatever he could.

"I kind of wanted to say sorry," Ariadne said, dropping her hands to her sides. "I mean, I thought you were just being an avoidy dick with no game plan and rocks for brains, and, um, yeah. I was wrong. So, sorry."

Arthur blinked at her, and started to come to some very unpleasant conclusions. "Ari...what did Eames _tell_ you?"

"Nothing," Ariadne said, and rubbed her thumb over her collarbone. "He just – I know you said he was fucked up, and I thought I got it, but I didn't, okay. I really didn't. Seriously, Yusuf was like _this far_ from flying over just to knock him out."

"Ariadne. Eames is not fucked up....Or rather he is, but so am I and..." Arthur just shook his head. "I think you all just need to let us be fucked up. We'll either work it out or we won't."

He might actually have deserved the scathing look she gave him for that. "Uh-huh. Well with you hiding and Miles giving him what I think is probably neat tequila with some kind of green food colouring in it, I'm going with you won't. Ever. Unless you do something."

"I'm not hiding," Arthur began, but at Ariadne's disbelieving expression amended his comment. "I'm not hiding from Eames. Not really. I fully intend to talk to him. Hell, I'll even let him punch me in the face if it will help at all....I just can't deal with the family stuff right now. I don't want to play Uncle Arthur because I'm afraid that I'll just go off on someone...probably someone under four feet tall and that kind of guilt I just do not need."

Ariadne didn't look horrified, or accusing, or ask him how he could even think that. She just hugged him, suddenly and tightly, and Arthur could see why it always made Eames feel panic-stricken, because it was so damn uncomplicated, her affection, so undemanding. "Yeah," she said quietly. "Okay. It won't be that bad, you know? But we can stay here for a bit. I mean, Saito knows." She giggled suddenly. "Saito knows all, yeah, okay, bad choice of words there, but I think Eames talked to him, and whatever got said, he sorted out the plane for us, so – I don't think it'll be that bad."

"Okay...yeah...I know I can't stay here. Just — give me a little more time."

Ariadne nodded, and they settled back down on his beach blanket and watched the waves roll in and out for awhile, Arthur letting his mind turn over what he had just been told, sifting through it for useful information that could possibly help him.

Ariadne had said that Miles was feeding Eames alcohol, that could be either bad or good. Maybe he'd get drunk enough that he'd forget why he was angry with Arthur, or maybe he'd get so drunk that he'd forget why it wasn't a good idea to try to beat Arthur to a pulp. Or maybe, just maybe, he'd be mellow enough to listen to him without panicking? Arthur's luck usually didn't run that way though so he was more than prepared for the second option.

There was the sound of someone clearing their throat and Ariadne leaned against Arthur's shoulder, "Miles made homemade guacamole and salsa. It's very yummy."

Arthur just laughed and shook his head, "Yeah...I wouldn't want to miss out on that, I'm sure."

"It's Miles. He'll come and force-feed it to you if you don't volunteer," Ariadne said cheerfully. "Also, just be glad it's not real cooking. He brings leftovers to class."

"He's a bad cook?" Arthur hadn't noticed.

"As long as you like everything swimming in butter, he's a great cook," Ariadne made an expressive little face. "Not so good when it's cold, honestly."

**

The party was in full swing when they made their way back up to the yard. Or at least in as full a swing as less than a dozen adults and two small children could make it. Ariadne immediately dragged Arthur over to a lounge chair, shoved him into it and then proceeded to take over both his lap and the nearest bowl of salsa and chips.

"I'm really not that hungry." Arthur said quietly.

"Fine...then you can feed me." Ariadne said with bright enthusiasm, holding up the bowl expectantly.

Arthur sighed, and obeyed her, trying to focus on not covering both of them in Miles's incredibly sloppy salsa-approximation, and to not look at Eames at the same time.

"'S messy but not too bad," Ariadne said around her mouth full. "You need a beer. Dom! Bring us a couple of beers, okay?"

"Sure, Ari." Dom cracked the top off two, but it was Saito that delivered them.

"Arthur," he said with his usual gravity. "When I said I was happy to be called on favours, I never imagined this would be among them."

"Delivering drinks?" Arthur hedged for time but Saito's sharp expression cut him off. "No, Saito-san, I'm certain that you didn't. I'm sorry you got involved in this...mess."

"It has been enlightening," Saito said, and graced Arthur with a rare smile. "Also, I purchased real estate. I feel more educated."

He inclined his head, and went off to be educated by James in how to be a caterpillar. It was an unnerving sight.

"Real estate?" Arthur said, wide-eyed. Ariadne shrugged.

"Think he bought Europe's market," she said casually.

"Of course he did." Arthur just shook his head, then laughed when Ariadne poked him in the ribs and pointed at the salsa and chips. "Oh, excuse me Mistress...Your humble slave has been derelict in his duties."

"Too right," Ariadne said, her mouth full once more.

Eames was a terrible, terrible influence on her. And Arthur was failing completely at not looking over at him, because fuck, apart from anything else, he'd missed being able to do that, being able to just look over and know he'd be there, that there was someone watching out for him and a point to his stupid well-trained hyper-vigilance because there was someone to turn it on.

And, God, Eames looked good. He was slouched in a chair, one hand wrapped around one of Miles's pseudo-Margaritas, the other dangling loosely over the arm of the chair as he chatted with Dom about something. His shirt was unbuttoned at the top, showing his throat and a few inches of tanned chest. It all made Arthur ache to do something idiotic, like walk over and put his lips against the pulse he could almost feel from across the yard.

Eames looked over at him, and Arthur feigned absorption in the chips and Ariadne, but not before he saw that there was undisguised affection in Eames's eyes, and nothing like the cold violence he had been dreading. Affection, and exhaustion, and God. Dom had been right. Dom had actually been right, and wasn't that oddly appropriate, that the man who had been the first to meet Eames, the first to decide he was worth trusting, had also been the one who finally made the right judgement about timing?

Because yeah. Eames was well past ready to stop running.

Arthur wasn't quite as sure, suddenly, about himself.

**

He had never been one to trust easily, but he supposed that was part of what made him a good point man. He watched, he sized up weaknesses and he figured out how to exploit them. In turn it kept people who knew what he did for a living from ever trusting him too fully.

There had only ever been three exceptions to that rule. Dom, who knew that Arthur's skills functioned more as a safety net for his team and only exploitatively on the mark, Mal, who had always seemed to look past everything he was good at doing to some kind of 'best' that Arthur still wasn't sure he possessed...and for some Christ only knew reason, Eames. It wasn't as if they didn't argue non-stop about...well, pretty much everything under the sun, up to and including whether there _was_ a sun if it was a particularly bad day...but once things were settled down to the plan, Eames trusted him in a way that not even Dom did.

That was why they often wound up sharing a room when they were on jobs together, because Eames said, "I know you, Arthur. You're a ridiculous prat with a stick up your arse, but you'll make sure I don't lose my mind and try to shoot myself out of reality."

Which, given what Eames generally _did_ to reality as a matter of course, was actually a given worry if a job went on for too long. Arthur had to know the mark's thoughts and actions and drives, know it all well enough to prepare the rest of the team for any possible eventuality.

Eames, on the other hand, had to _be_ the fucking eventuality, and Arthur had always lived in terror, even back when they had Mal's skill to bring everyone home, that this would be the time Eames left himself behind instead of his forgery, and they ended up losing him to some dreamed-up wasteland of lost souls.

Their current job, trying to get the formula for a new medical adhesive, had been tremendously taxing on Eames. He had spent longer hooked to the PASIV, taking in more Somnacin and spent longer hours awake in between. Arthur wasn't certain but he couldn't remember Eames getting more than about five hours of natural sleep in the last four or five days. And then the job had become a mess...which yeah, sometimes no amount of planning could fix...but they'd made it through and got it done.

He'd actually cut out early and left the clean up to everyone else just so he could arrange for their hotel...and then it was all bollixed up. Some kind of Fraternity or Brotherhood or something was in town and booking up all the rooms. There was nothing to be done for it but take what he could get.

He was just climbing out of the shower, still in a shitty mood, when he heard Eames come in.

"Arthur!" he called with a pillow-muffled voice. "Arthur, check your totem to see if this is real, because I am bloody well having sex with this bed. It's amazing."

Fucking wonderful, in the strictest sense of obscenities, because if Eames _was_ going to have sex with the bed, Arthur didn't want to be anywhere near either of them. The shower had done nothing to make him feel warmed out of the chill of exhaustion, he still wanted to kill their employer, and he was in absolutely no mood to tolerate a strung-out Eames flirting with the limits of his tolerance levels.

"Please feel free," he said, hoping none of his all-encompassing misery showed in his voice, because if there was anything worse than Eames on a sleep-deprivation high finding everything on the planet a massive turn on, it was Eames not quite in control of himself and _worrying_ about him, because that had the nasty tendency to make Arthur want to give in and be _fussed over_ , which was definitely not happening in the world's worst hotel, "not to tell me any more about you, the bed, or your sexual orientation ever again."

"God, you are really fucking boring, haven't you –" Whatever it was that Eames was going to accuse him of doing...or actually, of not doing was interrupted by his next rambling comment. "Huh. You're in the bathroom."

"Yes, I am. Well done." Arthur answered him, half under his breath. All he wanted was to sleep. That was all Eames should have wanted too, really.

"Why is there only one bathroom?" was Eames next groggy and disjointed question.

"Because there is also only one bed," Arthur answered, in full possession of his wonderful ability to ride with any given disconnect, wrapping a towel around his waist and stomping out of the bathroom and over to his suitcase to look for his pyjamas. "And you're sleeping on the floor or the chair or the couch or some place else because I was here first."

"Fuck if I am," Eames said emphatically, which Arthur really couldn't blame him for, seeing as he appeared to have lost the power of cohesive eye movement, apart from anything else, staring at the ceiling as though it held the mysteries of the universe in its rather bad paint-job. "I've been awake for almost..." Eames rolled his head slowly to the side, peered at the clock on the bedside table, and then, when trying to focus on that rather painfully and obviously didn't work, pulled his wristwatch up to his face instead. "...almost thirty-two...er...forty-three...er...a whole lot of hours..."

Arthur, with fantastic difficulty, restrained himself from putting them both out of Eames's misery and smothering him with a pillow, and settled for shoving him over to one side of the bed rather than trying to navigate the exhausted starfish-posture of bed-stealing doom that his co-worker had decided to adopt, presumably in the quest for better bed-sex, which just seemed wrong, and also not something Arthur wanted to think about too carefully. "I so don't care," he said, with perfect truth. All he wanted was to lie down and fucking well _pass out_.

He tugged one of the pillows out from under Eames and tossed it back up to the head of the bed only to be met with a groaned protest, "I needed that."

Arthur gave a disgusted snort, dropped his towel and started pulling on his pyjamas, "No, really? This is what you actually need." He held up one fist in demonstration. "Then I can use it to knock you unconscious and we'll both be able to get some sleep."

"Wha—?"

"Eames..." Arthur sighed, but didn't feel at all guilty when Eames jerked awake.

"What the fuck??"

"I said the bed was mine." Although at that point he'd have gladly settled for half or even a third if it just got him somewhere to go to sleep.

"Oh, fuck you, fuck off!" Eames was pretty adamant for someone who was nine tenths asleep.

Arthur couldn't help laughing as he tried to extricate some covers. Eames might have been happy enough to have sex with the bed itself, but he was pretty damn useless at utilising it for its intended purpose. He suspected it was going to be blackmail material for _months_ , just mentioning this when Eames got too annoying – again – or maybe threatening to repeat the whole bizarrity of it to Dom.

He managed to secure both the blanket and most of the sheet before relenting and spreading half the blanket back over Eames, who was most definitely ten tenths asleep by this point, and stretching out on his (almost) half of the bed.

"What in God's name –" Eames jerked and turned, pulling the blanket with him.

"Jesus fucking Christ, Eames, you twitch like a dog, _worse than_ –" Arthur half turned, lifting up on his elbow for better purchase, and tugged back at the blanket, frustrated with the whole thing and wondering how the hell anyone that asleep could be so annoying.

Surprising, appalled guilt replaced his annoyance fairly immediately when he noticed the pale sheen of sweat on Eames's skin, the greyish tint to his lips.

"Fuck. Fucking chemists, fuck. Eames, you're on a comedown, I need to –" He scrambled to disentangle Eames from the bedclothes that he was now clutching around him. "Hold on. I have my kit in the suitcase."

 _You're a ridiculous prat with a stick up your arse, but you'll make sure I don't lose my mind and try to shoot myself out of reality._

It hadn't occurred to either of them that there might be a situation where Eames was past even trying that kind of escape, because his mind had taken him straight beyond it and into a hell caused by the drugs themselves rather than their final effects.

They were so used to Mal's brilliance that inadequate chemists had never entered the equation, and _Sloppy_ , Arthur castigated himself, _all this time missing her and you never thought what that might mean for the job, how could you have missed something this obvious, fucking hell --_

He hoped to God that whatever Eames was seeing, it wasn't actually him, because for some reason the thought that he could inspire that look of terrified anguish was a cold worse than any exhaustion could filter through his skin, and if he could just get some fucking _co-operation_ , rather than dream-mangled fighting, he might be able to _do something_ \--

"Damn it, will you just –"

" _No_!" Eames howled, his eyes wide.

Arthur's heart caught in his throat and he worked feverishly to actually fucking do something, "Hey, it's fine, it's fine, just – Christ, give me your wrist, it's okay, breathe, I'll have you under in a second, just –"

Eventually, he got the odd combination of sedative, vitamins and things he'd never even thought to ask Mal about – 'Do not worry about the specifics, mon enfant, trust me, it will do the job', and for once he couldn't have cared less about her high-handedness, because even dead he trusted her more than the idiot who'd managed to mess up a simple fucking Somnacin blend – into Eames and both of them settled down on the bed.

He held Eames tight, allowing himself the indulgence for a few long moments, while he murmured meaningless words, "it's alright...it's alright. Everything will be just perfect. I'll make sure you're okay. I promise. Perfect. Just perfect."

But he'd broken that promise, too, no matter how hard he'd tried not to. Because he'd fallen asleep, and he'd stayed asleep, and he hadn't even woken up when Eames left the room and the wreckage of the night before and all the things Arthur had been ready to say into cold and sober morning light.

He hadn't woken up, and when he did, it was too late to say any of it to anyone but himself.

**

All in all, Arthur wasn't sure if his new hiding place, aided and abetted by Ariadne, was better or worse than the one he had before. This one had more comfortable seats, but it was also darker and a bit stuffy. Of course, Arthur would never let Saito know that he found any fault with the Mercedes he had rented to bring everyone in from the airport (or possibly just to enjoy himself driving a Mercedes, who the hell knew with him) because, really, it was more the fault of Dom's garage than the car itself.

On the other hand, it was a great place to think about things like what to do next, and what he didn't know, and what it was he'd missed that somehow Dom and Ariadne and goddamnit, _Saito_ seemed to be trying to tell him. Because he was pretty sure he'd worked it out, that he knew what needed to be done and how he needed to act – he might be the world's worst at understanding his own feelings, but he thought he'd worked past that enough to live with them and be patient and _wait_ , that he'd come to all the right conclusions.

So why was it that everyone seemed to be going out of their way to prove him wrong?

Not that he wouldn't love to be wrong. He'd love to just walk out on the lawn and, God, do something stupid and romantic for once, something like, God, what did people do? Something like take Eames by the hand, look him in the eye and say —

"Arthur!"

Arthur? No, that was wrong. He'd say—

"Arthur?"

Oh...Ariadne. "What?"

"You're probably safe. They convinced Eames to be the bird and they've already begun."

"Oh joy," Arthur said dully to the car ceiling.

"Arthur, get your ass out of the car and go be a monster," Ariadne sounded horribly like his mother, and the thought of his mother putting those words together in a sentence was ghastly enough to make him obey her.

He picked up a piece of heavy driftwood that James had carried up the stairs the day before. He wasn't sure why, unless he intended to use it on Ariadne if he actually got dragged into the middle of the Miles/James/Philippa Production.

"`Twas brillig, and the slithy toves  
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;  
All mimsy were the borogoves,  
And the mome raths outgrabe. "

Miles's voice rang out over the scene, as Dom, carrying a plastic pirate sword, struck a heroic post off to one side.

The Jabberwocky consisted of James and Philippa in one of Mal's old silk dressing-gowns, and _God_ , how did Dom stand this, how could he bear it? How was it possible for him to hold his poses and play games and live with looking at something that should have been nothing but amusing and have it recall only grief, each and every day it must have been like that for him, how did he _do_ it?

But Dom's face, when Arthur looked at him, was only a bit sad. Somehow , it seemed, the fact that it was the children, those little bits of Mal that he had left to him, made it alright. It was as if anything that had been Mal's now belonged to James and Philippa, including, most importantly, their father's heart.

Eames seemed oblivious, but then Eames, as Arthur knew to his cost, could seem to be anything he damn well chose. It was moments of honesty that he found hard to live with, not presenting a new mask to fit the moment.

And _that_ , Arthur finally understood, was what he wanted. Not for Eames to be honest all the time, or even part of the time. Just to feel that it was a certainty that Eames would be honest with _him_ , that there was going to be a time when he could turn around to him after a day like this and ask him what he had thought, how he had felt, when he saw Pip and James in the dressing gown; that Arthur would be able to ask and know that the response would be real.

"One, two! One, two! And through and through  
The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!  
He left it dead, and with its head  
He went galumphing back."

Dom ran out with his shiny plastic sword and swung it at the kids in slow motion, making silly swish noises. The Jabberwocky quickly, although not quietly, went into its death throes.

And oh, God, what were the noises they were making? Choking and gagging and falling left and right, right and left. Arthur had seen lots of people die in the dreamscape, he'd seen enough of them die in reality, for God's sake, and absolutely none of them had ever made noises like the ones he was hearing now. He took a moment to be incredibly thankful for that small fact.

They shouted something at Eames, who stood stock-still and looked completely bewildered, and then Ariadne jumped on his back, leaning forward to whisper something in his ear, and Eames laughed, surprised out of all characters but his own, while Ariadne made vague movements above him that Arthur suspected were meant to be wings.

It seemed the monster wasn't needed after all. Arthur looked down at the driftwood in his hands and grinned. On the other hand, there was sometimes a lot more fun to be had from being a _not_ -monster.

So Arthur, taking his courage in both hands, jumped out of nowhere and started swinging his very heavy wooden stick at everyone who made up the jubjub bird. Ariadne fell off Eames's back into the grass and lay there unwinglike and flailing and laughing, and Eames rubbed at his shins and swore, "Arthur , you fucking twat, stop hitting—Stop! That hurts, damn it, God, you really are a complete twat, I swear —"

Dom just sat down, laughing with his hands over his face, "Oh my God, stop saying that, Jesus, _Eames_."

Because, of course, James and Philippa poked their heads out from under the bathrobe and sang out, "Twat twat twat you fucking twat," over and over again, because apparently that was the best thing they had ever heard in their lives.

Eames just sat in the grass beside Ariadne and laughed and rubbed at his shins some more, and Arthur valiantly didn't throw the stick at his silly head, because _honestly_.

And then Eames looked at him, looked at him properly for the first time, and stopped laughing, and his eyes were very soft when he said quietly, "Hello, there, you."

Arthur's hand made an aborted motion toward his pocket and his totem because that look, that look just had to be a dream.

"Hi," he finally managed to get out.

"I am _not_ getting these kids to bed on my own," Dom said to the background chorus of a disagreement about how many heads a twat had, which rendered Eames utterly useless for anything but crying with laughter.

Miles, looking murderously amused, scooped up James and moved towards the house, "Ah, my Lord Buckingham, it is long past time for you to make your repose. Bid farewell to this good company and we will depart."

"Farewell, good twats!" James announced , shouting back over Miles's shoulder as they went in through the door.

"Oh my God," Eames said to the sky, his expression somewhere between terror and hysteria. "Dom's going to kill me."

Ariadne wheezed faintly into the grass. "No shit," she managed at last.

Philippa's departure was somewhat more sedate. She hugged each of them and told them good night, but when she got to Eames she kissed his cheek and giggled, "You're the best uncle ever."

And Arthur watched as Eames didn't slip sideways into another persona, didn't do anything to avoid Philippa's kiss, didn't do anything but take her small, dirty hand and kiss the back of it and say, very quietly, "Thank you, love."

Philippa smiled at him in the same way she had been smiling at Arthur all week, as though she wanted to give him something but wasn't sure what, and Arthur found himself wondering if she would somehow smuggle stuffed toys into Eames's hotel room, access gained courtesy of Saito, before she skipped off. Arthur stood up to follow her, not due to any overwhelming wish to help tuck her into bed, but because he simply had to move. If he didn't, he was probably about ten seconds away from doing something incredibly stupid – and he wanted to talk to Eames, he wanted to have a serious conversation, and however that turned out, he was probably going to use up all his incredibly stupid points for the year in the process. So really, he needed to keep some in reserve.

**

But when he got back outside, Eames was smoking on the porch, and Dom was talking to him, and even though Arthur had asked him not to, he somehow knew that Dom was getting this part of it right. And he knew what Dom was saying.

 _You failed. You both failed. There's nothing in your head that shouldn't be there. You both failed._

He knew what Dom was saying because of the look on Eames's face, the grief and devastation that he'd hidden from them for so long, the years of desolate loneliness and mistrust carving deeper into old lines.

All Arthur wanted to do was get there as fast as possible and hold him – not hold on, to make him see sense, or cling on with some kind of force, to make him stay – he just wanted to hold him, because Eames looked awful, and tired, and _vulnerable_ , and he was never, ever meant to look any of those things.

"What was it she said to you?" Dom asked, his voice a soft entreaty.

"Don't you dare push this, Dom, not now, you agreed —" Arthur snapped out. It wasn't Dom's place to have this part of the conversation, they had both agreed to that. And Dom had admitted how much he wanted to, and sometimes, Arthur could honestly _shake_ him. "Damn it, Dom."

But somehow his annoyance at Dom seemed to strike Eames with its force instead, his head dropping down as if some terrible weight were suddenly weighing on him.

 _Oh, good choice, Arthur. Make the man feel like he's caught in the backlash on top of everything else._

But more to the point, he also wasn't leaving. He wasn't leaving and he wasn't moving from under Dom's arm, and he was _still there._

Even if what he said after that nearly broke Arthur's heart, because Christ, he'd known it was bad. Of course he had, he'd been there for the fall out, but to hear Eames, bleak and uncertain, saying :

"...that the trust and reliance only went as far as the storyline we were playing and if things went south...I would be on my own, so I'd better have a good bolt hole to ride it out. And when I found that bolt hole – I'd know how to be happy. But like you said, we failed, and I never – I mean, there wasn't one." Eames looked down at his feet. "I always figured it would be like that anyway. Not like any of you owed me anything."

Arthur didn't have to guess at how angry Dom would be at that. If it hadn't been largely Mal's fault, if it had been _Arthur_ who'd made Eames feel like this, Dom would have been gunning for him. He wasn't even so sure about how Dom felt about Mal, right this second, if he were honest.

That still didn't mean he had to spare Dom's feelings when he started questioning Eames again, "Dom, we talked about this, and right now you need to be the one who shuts up, remember?"

And amazingly, for once, he did, although he still kept his arm around Eames's shoulder in a show of comfort which Eames seemed to appreciate.

"What exactly did she tell you the bolt-hole was?" Arthur asked softly and then had to rush ahead because Eames's expression suddenly took on a slight edge of panic, "It's okay. It's okay, Eames. I think I get it. She told you it was being happy because of someone, because of loving someone, right?" He had to interrupt himself again, "And damn it, Dom, I owe you one kneecap shot at least, so don't even think about saying anything yet or I'll do it right here."

Dom looked innocent and guileless and obviously had no intention of going anywhere, and Arthur was incredibly tempted to shoot him for real, especially when that was the point at which Eames stopped caring about whether _any_ of them were there, and just bent over, leaning on his knees with his face in his hands, and Saito, of all people, was the one to rescue them, with some idiocy about sex on a beach and distracting Dom.

It obviously made sense to Dom, though, because he got up and left, and Eames stayed where he was, shivering a little now without the bulwark warmth of Dom's comforting weight to steady him.

"It's not real, is it? She fucking got in my head and told me that happiness...trust, love, all of it – that was my bolt-hole. That it would keep me safe so I should look for it." Eames shook his head and gave a sad little laugh. "She just didn't know that I was more afraid of that than anything..."

"And then when you thought about just maybe giving it a try, she made you feel like it couldn't be real because she made it sound so easy. It wasn't on purpose, Eames, it was just typical lovely Mal, saying things about life as though all it would take was a snap of the fingers for everything to work out. Reality – reality doesn't work like that."

He might as well have been talking in Swahili for all the effect he was having. Eames still didn't look at him, the porch floor and their feet apparently of all-consuming interest, and Arthur was suddenly possessed by the very unhelpful desire to shake _him_ rather than now-absent Dom, just to get some kind of response that wasn't defeat.

"How –" Eames said at last, and at least he was talking again, even if he seemed to have taken some kind of vow not to look anywhere but down. "How the hell did you –"

"Because," Arthur said with a calmness he was a long way from feeling, "that's how she explained it to me, too."

"Bloody hell, Arthur..." Eames groaned. "I can understand her saying it to me, but—"

"No, Eames, she did just that and well, I felt the same way you did but with less panic and a lot less running." Arthur might have laughed there, but even now the pain was too fresh. "We always trusted her, both of us. And, like Dom says, we kind of put her on a pedestal, believed that she knew what she was talking about because, I guess, we could see how she and Dom felt about each other and because they worked so well—"

"We thought she knew..." Eames nodded.

"And obviously she was such an expert on the way you think. The next thing I knew was waking up and deciding to come out and see what kind of insanity the two of you were brewing...but you weren't there. It was three in the morning and you were just gone, you stupid bastard, because somehow you got it in what passes for your brain that Mal was trying to incept you while you were awake!"

Arthur had waited so long to say that, to get it off his chest and out into the open.

He talked and talked, not sure of anything except that he had to get Eames to see what he meant, that however badly Mal had screwed up in her attempts to make things right, she had been doing nothing but telling the truth, she had been trying to make it all okay in her own love-obsessed way, she hadn't got any single part of what she had tried to prove that night wrong – except in the way she'd chosen to demonstrate it.

"I hit you instead," he admitted at last, because God, couldn't Eames see that anything else would have been impossible?

And that got responses, that got real responses, and Eames finally looked at him, and they were both long since past making sense, and despite it all, relief flooded through Arthur and nearly undid him completely, because finally, _finally_ , they were starting to talk about the same thing, which was _them_.

Eames kept looking at him, no longer hiding even from the inside of his own mind, and there was a slight smile on his face that conveyed all the depths of relief that were unstringing Arthur's ability to keep his backbone in a line, and his eyes were soft and warm, as they had been in the garden. "Yeah, I can see why you did it. Not as though you really hurt me anyway, darling, you hit like a six year old."

"Fuck you, Eames," Arthur said automatically, and got back control of his spine, because they were _not_ going back to half-assed insults and calling it good, not now.

"I just – I don't get why you left." Eames frowned up at him, oddly uncertain. "And you were going to work with fucking Benton Hale. I mean really, what the fuck were you thinking?"

And okay, maybe _Eames_ was talking in Swahili, because even if they'd got to the point where he was capable of actually looking at Arthur, which had to be progress, _what_?

"There wasn't even a job," Arthur said blankly, dropping his hands from where they had somehow ended up on either side of Eames's face, probably after the mutual sofa-stupidity admissions, because he knew himself well enough to realise it was fairly improbable he could have seen that look of stunned understanding on Eames's face — _That was for **me**?_ — and _not_ have touched him. "There –"

 _"I kind of wanted to say sorry. I mean, I thought you were just being an avoidy dick with no game plan and rocks for brains, and, um, yeah. I was wrong. So, sorry."_

"Ariadne!"

And the girl had the gall to come out on the porch, beautifully arched eyebrows raised and the most radioactive drink Arthur had ever seen in her hand, and admit quite readily and cheerfully that she'd set them up. Set them up to both wind up at Dom's, to have to talk, to make sure they did even if it was only about how Eames didn't want Arthur to work with Hale. Which Arthur was certain he wouldn't have done, no matter how angry he was – Benton Hale was an untrustworthy dick, and Eames hated him, and even if Eames had been angry enough to take him into a sedated dream and kill him long enough for limbo to be a real fear, he still watched Arthur's back better than most of the pros Arthur had met in the military – and of course. Of course that was what had finally convinced him to come here. He'd come because even with all the months of working together, and the terrible hotels, and giving Eames Ariadne's friendship as a kind of life-totem, with all that time and all that concentrated _trying_ on Arthur's part, Eames had only just started trusting himself enough _now_ to even try and work it out.

And the worst part, the absolute _worst part_ of all of this was that Ariadne had known, known exactly what to do about this, even as Arthur and Dom had blundered about in the dark and the morass of their well-intentioned conversation. She'd been able to manipulate Eames when he and Dom stood no chance, for the simple reason that she'd obviously known what she was doing, she'd known better than Arthur for all his planning and his care, because whatever else was going to happen, and whatever else they needed to sort through and explain, her insane little bout of storytelling had resulted in Eames doing what Arthur hadn't even let himself _think_ about, and holding onto him as though just for once, just for now, he believed something good could come out of his life – and it included Arthur.

It was incredibly hard to let go, but Arthur knew the second he talked about getting a new apartment that he had to, because the old, deep-seated panic was back in Eames's voice – "Oh _God. No_ , I can't, I don't want, I can't watch you, I want, I don't—" and Arthur was prepared to do _anything_ not to have him sound like that while Arthur was in hearing distance, in touching distance, in a space where he could make this _stop_ , not ever again.

And when he finally got them back on track, Eames decided to bypass the verbal kind of explanation, and instead dragged him off to Dom's room, hooked him up to a PASIV, and took him into the weirdest fucking dream Arthur had ever walked through, and it definitely proved that if nothing else was about to get completely screwed in the near future, there was a hell of a lot to still sort out, where they were going to live being just the start of it, but for right now, right now, seconds after waking, Eames having tricked him into agreeing something or other that Arthur for some bizarre reason trusted would be all right, for right now there was only this, Eames holding him, the warmth of his breath on Arthur's neck, the feel of his arms, his hands.

"You're not going to hit me again, are you?" Eames asked suddenly. "If I kiss you again, I mean."

"It depends on how good the kiss is," Arthur laughed, dragging him closer.

The kiss was awkward, almost painful in its angle and force, and while Arthur knew that most of the clumsiness had been caused by him, and most of the reticence had definitely been on Eames's side, he also knew that it was oddly and exactly what they had both needed, because the next second Eames was relaxing against him, his mouth opening and surprisingly soft, and all thoughts of proving anything or demanding something had gone from Arthur's mind completely, because he knew that he could lose himself into what this kiss had become, all that tenderness and want and, yes, thank God, desire on both their sides, he hadn't been alone in wanting after all, and understanding, until time gave up and left them to it in disgust.

"Oh Jesus fuck," Eames said suddenly, pulling away. "This is Dom's room."

Arthur did not whine. He would insist until the end of his days that what he did next was _not_ whine.

Which made Eames's laughter completely inexplicable, if a damn sight better to hear than the panic-stricken babbling he'd been resorting to before the bizarre house-based dreamshare.

"Mine's down the hall," Arthur managed to mumble, hoping that he didn't sound too anxious.

"And what are our chances of getting from here to there without Dom, or Ariadne, or even Saito catching us at it?"

"Zero," Arthur said dismally. "So we should just stay here..."

"In Dom's room." It was amazing how Eames could make statements into flat negations, but okay, right, a whole world of no, and besides which, Dom would _kill them_ , so he had more than a point.

"Yeah, no," Arthur agreed, " _not_ in Dom's room, also they are definitely going to be waiting for us to come out of here, fuck."

"Best get it over with then, yeah?"

"I guess," Arthur leaned his head on Eames's shoulder with a sigh. "Why do we have friends again?"

"I haven't the foggiest," Eames said with incredible sincerity, as Dom started shouting from safely outside the door about how he did _not_ want to have to come in there, _please and thank you_. "Target practice?"

**

"I'm not mad," Dom said when they finally emerged from his bedroom. "I'm just disappointed."

He ruined the effect by cackling like a hyena, which really wasn't the disturbing thing. No, the disturbing thing was the tolerant look Saito gave him.

"Oh my _God_ ," Arthur said, horrified by the entire set-up, which was so much worse than he'd dared contemplate. It was a fucking _welcoming committee_.

Eames, who could be incredibly annoying even when he was at his best and most brilliantly deflective, just looped his arm over Arthur's shoulders and pulled him in. He didn't even try not to laugh, but at least the gesture gave Arthur the opportunity to say horrible things about Dom into his neck without too much of it being heard by anyone else.

"Did I miss the party?" Yusuf asked from the doorway.

"Weren't invited," Ariadne said smugly.

Yusuf looked around the room. "Ha bloody ha," he said at last, and then smiled. "All right there, you two?"

Arthur, who was still muttering imprecations against Dom into Eames's crumpled shirt, guessed he was looking at them from the way an odd tension he hadn't even known was there went out of Eames's neck.

"Yeah," Eames said, and Arthur could feel for the first time how his whole body changed when he smiled for real, as though he was being transformed all through him into whatever emotion had provoked it. "Yeah. All right, mate."

"Good stuff." Arthur turned his head just enough to see that Yusuf was beaming at them all, hefting his bag in his hand. "So, hey, Saito, this job...."

And suddenly the tenseness came back but it was, somehow, different. It was wariness and suspicion and _no_ , not this time, no — "You said there wasn't a job, Arthur."

"There isn't." Arthur looked away from Yusuf and frowned. "Or not one that I knew about. Honestly. Eames, I would never —"

"Ah," said Yusuf. "Ariadne, my dear –"

"Okay, so I hadn't got round to –"

"Am I the only person in the room who understands the importance of relevant information at appropriate times?" Saito actually sounded annoyed. "Dominic, at least tell me you –"

"I thought I was hosting a party," Dom said, sounding five seconds away from a spectacular bout of rage.

"And so you are," Saito conceded. "And a very nice one, with children sleeping just there."

The thought of waking up James and Philippa (and probably disturbing Miles) and the consequences of any or all of that had Dom ushering them back outside almost immediately.

"What the _fuck_?" Dom exploded as soon as they were even off the porch. "Jesus. Jesus fucking Christ. I – you brought this into my house, you brought a job to my house, what's _wrong_ with you all, what part of –" He sounded torn between anger and actually starting to cry, which was fucking _terrifying_.

Arthur scowled, trying to deflect attention from Dom's despairing misery with his own anger. "Oh, no. Come on. You all know that's wrong. Dom has his kids here now. You can't just do this."

"But it's just—" Yusuf began.

"No. That's non-negotiable." Arthur cut him off. "It always was. Nothing illegal around the kids. No Cobol. No extraction jobs. No doing favours for businessmen. No anything that might be dangerous or wind up keeping Dom away from them." His unspoken addition to that was _And if Miles knew about this I will end him slowly._

"It's a good job!" Ariadne didn't seem to realise she was fighting a battle already lost. "It's fun, honestly, it's –"

"I don't care," Eames said abruptly, "if it's a job that lets you build Babylon and has me forging Alexander. Ari, you just went _too far_." He was warm and solid and thrumming with anger at Arthur's side.

"It's _safe_ —!" Ariadne looked shocked at Eames's tone of voice, but was still persisting. "I would never –"

"What, _think_?" Eames demanded. "Yeah, I'm working that out!"

Arthur put one hand on Eames's arm, his fingers tightening around his wrist. It was almost too much to believe that Eames was backing him up in this, but he seemed to understand. He knew why this was upsetting Dom and why Arthur was protecting him and what was more, Eames _agreed_ with Arthur's response, which shouldn't have been surprising, because way back before he ran, Eames had unashamedly loved Dom – but somehow it still was, it was both surprising and a completely amazing feeling – because Arthur knew this reaction, this time, this moment here, as Eames let himself show anger to the two people in the world he usually went out of his way to be good to, this wasn't because of Dom. This was because of _him_. And amidst all the worry, that knowledge sang in his veins.

"Let's get out of here, Eames." Arthur said tightly, pushing down everything else for later, because this time, this time there would be a later, he would be able to talk about this, he wasn't on his own in any of it. "Dom, I'm sorry this happened. Please believe that I...we...had nothing to do with it."

Dom nodded at them tightly, and made a little aborted gesture toward Eames, part apology and part helplessness and somehow pleading, and Eames, who was usually the world expert at ignoring cues in favour of sending people down the path of righteous irritation; Eames, rather than playing his usual game, instead — _thank God_ — picked up on it, stepping forward without hesitation and wrapping his arms around Dom. "'S okay," he muttered. He was clearly audible to all of them, and yet it felt to Arthur as though it were an intrusion for the others to hear, because they hadn't been there, all those years before, they didn't have the memory of Dom and Eames as friends, laughing over something only they understood and dizzy with the power of their own blazing mental suns. They'd never seen Dom in his zombie sleep in the morning, while Eames said irascible and gentle-sounding things and stopped Dom from falling onto his face with one absent-minded arm, shuffling them both around the kitchen and making tea for himself while Arthur or Mal found Dom his mug from some odd location and filled it with black sugared coffee. "You're doing good, Dom. Let Saito handle this, 'kay?"

"Yeah," Dom nodded, then took a step back. "You two have a good night. I'll get this sorted out."

"Don't be afraid to give them all the boot, Dom." Arthur told him. "They're way out of line." Yusuf glared at him, and Arthur stared right back at him with unapologetic annoyance.

"Oh, I won't be." Dom gave a grin that was one-fourth jazz and three-fourths determination, and all of a sudden Arthur felt a whole lot better about walking out of there. Because Dom didn't seem quite so broken anymore, he was upset and he was mad as hell but he was in no way broken; his children more than filling in the cracks of his tenuous composure as soon as they appeared.

And Saito's expression, as he looked around him and took Yusuf and Ariadne under his flat, inimical gaze, was a long, long way from the distant amusement of the man who had so recently been educated in the mysterious ways of real estate and caterpillars.

"Perhaps we should talk," he said ominously, and Arthur tugged on Eames's wrist again, because seriously, they needed to be somewhere that wasn't where anyone else was, and fairly quickly.

"This could be amusing," Eames ventured.

"So could what we could be doing right now if we get to the hotel," Arthur pointed out, not really trusting himself to say anything even vaguely more meaningful.

It was obviously enough for Eames, though, even if he said quite a lot under his breath about how he couldn't believe Arthur was voluntarily walking through hotel doors again, because they were in Arthur's rental car in just a few moments.

**

The drive to Eames's hotel was...unfortunate. Out of the heat of the moment, every reservation that Arthur had ever imagined about just this very scenario came back to haunt him. By the time they got upstairs and to the door of the room, he was wondering if he was going to emulate Eames's worst moments of backing out of scenarios he wasn't prepared for, or maybe completely surpass them and just make a mad dash for the door, because, really, there were just so very many ways that this could go so incredibly wrong and he knew if it did, he would be the cause, not Eames.

He was the one who everyone claimed was so clueless and he knew he sucked at all this relationship stuff. Maybe it would be better if they just left things as they were, standing at the point where they were at least friends and could work together happily. It had been hard enough the first time with the hope that, somehow, he could fix it, but if he went further and then messed it up...Fuck, maybe he should just shoot himself in the head now and get it over with.

"Arthur, darling, please stop that."

"Huh?"

"Second guessing ," Eames said, which, while accurate as far as summations went, also explained exactly nothing at all. "Well, obviously I can't make you stop second guessing yourself, however much I'd like to, but I think everyone doing that about me is half the reason Ariadne lived up to her name and wound us all round her finger like her proverbial string, don't you?"

Oh yeah. That was the bit he'd happily chosen to forget. Give Eames clues and he came to the nastily right conclusion without any help at all – except in this case, it wasn't so much a bad conclusion as a vaguely embarrassing one, because Cobb had _warned_ him Eames would eventually see through what he'd been trying to set up with Ari, had in fact said Eames probably already knew, and fucking hell, why wouldn't his brain just _change channels_ when he needed it to?

"I—" Arthur began.

"Yes?"

"I...It...She...Well, it wasn't my best idea but I was fresh out, okay?" he finally blurted out.

"Oh, Arthur." Eames's chuckle was low and rough and hit him somewhere just south of his belt buckle.

"You haven't exactly made anything easy, you know?"

Eames grabbed Arthur's wrist and tugged him closer, "No...and nor have you, but this will be. I promise."

Arthur was pretty sure he was supposed to say something definitive and equally convinced at this stage, but all he could manage was " _Fucking_ hotel rooms," on a sort of helpless laugh, and all Eames's earnestness dissolved into a kind of surprised snort of very real amusement, which was fair enough, because honest to God, when his brain got unhinged, he really went all out to do the disconnect thing.

"Yeah, okay, I, uh, I think you need to shut up now," Eames said at last, once he'd stopped trying not to actually laugh in Arthur's face and looked a bit less like he'd been unexpectedly hit with a wet sock. Arthur nodded in frantic (and thankfully silent, he seemed to at least have that much control back) agreement.

And really, although he'd never admit it under pain of torture and threats of having to portray D'Artagnan in Miles and James's next great performance, Eames was right.

"A kiss." Eames said, sounding as if he were beginning a discussion of their next venture. "We'll begin there. Simplicity, Arthur, is always key."

"Oh my God, _now_ who needs to shut up?" Arthur demanded in disbelief, because seriously, did Eames actually want to talk his way _through_ this, what the everliving _fuck_? And God, they could end up standing here like idiots forever, and there was a _bed_ across the room, he could fucking well see it, and he'd got in his full quota of daily stupidity well before Yusuf arrived and freaked Cobb out, so.

It took him a bit of time to realise he was saying most of that out loud, which kind of killed the shutting up thing dead, but he was saying it into Eames's mouth by that time, so he figured it was fine, especially since Eames seemed to think he could actually catch words with his tongue.

Quite possibly he could, because the next thing Arthur ventured, when he had enough breath and coherence was, "Bnh", which was supposed to be bed and was apparently an unneeded noun since Eames had already begun to steer them in that direction.

It was good that someone was, since Arthur was still trying to catch his brain up with his body, and not doing an exactly amazing job of it, since he'd actually thought about this, and not just in the good sort of way, but in the if-this-ever-happens-I-will sort of way, and he really, really wanted to have all of himself in the same place because that might make it that much more enjoyable.

"Wait! Wait!"

"What _now_?" Eames groaned loudly.

"No...I just want to...Oh, fuck..." The last bit came out in a matching groan because Eames had just clamped his mouth, teeth and all, down on Arthur's neck. "Clothes off...off!" he continued desperately.

What followed was about the least elegant experience of Arthur's entire life, mostly because it would have been a hell of a lot easier if they'd focused on getting their _own_ clothes off, but that didn't happen because that would have meant stopping touching. Arthur managed to get Eames's t-shirt stuck _over his face_ , which was pretty amazingly awful and should have been less funny than it was, and his own jeans seemed to have been _superglued_ to one ankle, and all in all the only useful thing that either of them had managed was to get to the bed first, because otherwise he was fairly sure there would have been quite a bit of physical damage involved by the time they were done.

As a matter of fact, the only good thing that Arthur would later attribute to the first time he and Eames had sex was 'at least it didn't last very long'. They were on the bed, pressed together clumsily, kissing, touching, grinding haphazardly, legs entwined...and then it was done – first Arthur and then Eames within moments.

They both looked at each other, wide-eyed and panting, then Eames began to laugh and Arthur started to chuckle and the next thing he knew they were stretched out, side-by-side on the bed, both of them staring at the ceiling with smiles on their faces, occasional snorts and sniffs still shaking them.

"Oh, God...that was..."

"Yeah."

"We won't have anything to live up to," Arthur pointed out, which just sent Eames off into speech-killing laughter again. "Shut up, that's a good thing –"

"Please," Eames managed in a sort of croak. "For the love of God, just stop –"

Arthur couldn't. This was sort of brilliantly terrible. "Those couples who keep trying to recapture the magic –"

"Fucking hell, what're you going to do as a repeat? Stuff my head in a _bag_ —"

"Duct tape my own ankles –"

"Oh Jesus, that was awful, that was the _worst sex I have ever had_ —"

"And you are so not going to forget it," Arthur finished with an attempt at smugness that dissolved instead into an attempt to smother Eames with the wrecked coverlet as he actually _choked_ on his own sniggering.

**

They were much happier with each other by the time they arrived at Dom's the next morning. All things could be corrected, after all and if twice was lucky (God yes!) then three times was definitely the charm. No sleep was apparently a cure-all when you shared it in the right way.

"Relaxed," Ariadne announced when they walked into the kitchen.

Apparently their attempt to sneak in the back and avoid the snide comments was a total failure.

"And you're not buried in the back yard," Eames said in response, _just_ managing to avoid malice and hit the same tone of stating-the-obvious. Ariadne stuck her tongue out at him.

"Like anyone would," she said, waving a hand.

Arthur, who hadn't been entirely sure when he left the night before that Saito hadn't been planning _just that_ , restricted himself to raising his eyebrows at her. Oddly enough, she went a bit red.

"Okay, so Yusuf is good at explaining," she said with a bad attempt at nonchalance. "Um, there's coffee?"

He started for the pot, but stopped half-way there, "Who made it?"

"Not me, so don't make that face." Ariadne rolled her eyes.

"Me too, darling, if you don't mind?" Eames called back as he picked up the newspaper and sat down at the kitchen table.

"Awww," Ariadne burbled. "He called you 'darling'."

"Eames has always, unfortunately, called me darling." Arthur shot her an annoyed look, mostly due to the fact he didn't particularly like endearments anyway and years of exposure to them not meaning a damn thing hadn't exactly helped his opinion on the matter, so why he should be faced with Ariadne deciding to coo over it now seemed a deep unfairness – and poured two cups of coffee – one black with sugar, and one cream, no sugar.

"Calls fucking everyone that," Cobb said bad-temperedly, coming in and taking the cup of black coffee from Arthur's hand. He was obviously surfacing into his second go-round of waking up, and thoroughly not enjoying it. "Why are we talking about how he wrecks a normal language again?"

"He doesn't," Ariadne said, blinking at Cobb in what looked like genuine confusion. "He, like, calls us everything else."

"Huh," said Cobb, staring at what was now his coffee, and then apparently oblivious to just how insulting he was being, "yeah, no, he wouldn't you, not a habit. Sorry, I have to get James into clothes."

"Wait, he calls _you_ —" Ariadne was spluttering. Dom's smirk over his mug was way, way too knowing.

"Wouldn't you like to know," he said mildly, and wandered back out.

Arthur poured himself another cup of coffee and carried both back to the table.

"Ta."

"Welcome." Arthur dragged the Finance section out of the paper and buried his nose in it.

 _...and three...two...one..._

"What did he mean by that?" Ariadne asked.

Arthur peered over the top of the paper, "Ta? It means thank you."

"No! I mean Dom. What did he mean by 'not a habit'?"

"I am actually here," Eames said to the paper, but he didn't sound annoyed, or even particularly interested.

"Oh yeah, I was wondering who was ignoring me, nice to know it's you," Arthur agreed, and Eames grinned down at whatever pointless article he was so engrossed by. Arthur shook his head, and looked forward to the predictable outrage when Eames worked out he was drinking coffee as opposed to tea, which apparently his tastebuds hadn't yet caught up with.

"Um, hello?" Ariadne waved her hand between them, managing to block two attempts at paper-reading at the same time. "Guys? Dom? Not a habit? What?"

"Mal started it," Eames said absently.

" _You_ started it, Mal kept it."

"No, Mal always called Dom that –"

"Yeah, you just called everyone else that all the time, it ended up like a fucking earworm for about three months."

"I give up," said Ariadne in disgust, just as Eames worked out what he was drinking and looked up from the paper to give Arthur a look of pure betrayal.

"Ha," said Arthur to the world in general, smugly victorious over all.

There was sweet blessed silence, for all of fifteen seconds, before Yusuf came into the kitchen.

"Why is Cobb's son running through the living room...naked?"

"He's a child. They do that." Eames muttered. "Unlike adults who are expected to put theirs on and go to people's houses where they are given coffee instead of tea and are asked ridiculous questions."

"I never said you had to put clothes on." Arthur raised an eyebrow.

"No, but you wouldn't leave yours off, so it was a bit of a waste."

"Awesome," said Yusuf, but he was talking to the coffeepot, which still had liquid in it. It was sort of wonderful to be dismissed as general morning weirdness on a par with Cobb's child-inspired woes.

"You could both take your clothes off now," Ariadne said, but there was more mischief than expectation in her voice.

"Or not," Eames said, amused. "Yusuf, mate, get me some tea while you're there, yeah?"

And Arthur _saw_ the light of understanding go on in Ariadne's large eyes, as she finally cottoned on to the fact that it wasn't love-talk, it was just _Eames_ , who called her duckling and sweetheart and love and would probably settle on the former (or variations upon) in a bit, now that he seemed to have granted the latter appellation to Philippa; and who had never called anyone else that Arthur knew 'mate' on a consistent basis other than Yusuf, with whom he had basically fucking lived in Mombasa; who had always said 'darling Mal,' as though it were her name, and was probably never going to let himself fall into calling Dom 'bruv' again, but had once – and might, just might again, with time and a fuck of a lot more regained trust, given Dom's implicit acceptance of it just a short while previously, and the way Eames had moved forward to give one of his rare embraces to Dom only the night before.

"Where's the kettle?" Yusuf looked around blankly.

"On the stove." Arthur and Eames said in unison.

"And the tea?"

"In the little box –"

"—Next to the biscuit tin."

"Sheesh. Did both of you live with Dom sometime or something?" Ariadne looked from one to the other.

"Or something," Eames confirmed.

"It was safer," Dom agreed, coming back in with a corralled James, whose contribution to the great act of putting on clothing seemed to have been one of Philippa's skirts hoisted up to somewhere around his armpits, wellington boots, and a tea-towel around his neck. "Don't ask," he added. "Some arguments it's just better not to try and fight."

"Safer, now, is it?" Eames asked mockingly.

"Safer than letting the world endure you without supervision, damn right," Dom agreed without hesitation.

"Dom..." Arthur began.

"Do you disagree?"

Arthur's lips quirked slightly, "Only on principle and the fact that he's sitting with striking distance."

"Hey now!" Eames batted at Arthur with a rolled up section of the newspaper.

"See?"

There was general laughter and a flurry of paper-fencing that was mostly Ariadne and Eames flailing at each other with a complete lack of direct aim, and Arthur trying not to get swatted by either of them in the process, until Saito entered the room with Philippa in tow.

"Arthur...Mr. Eames," he greeted them.

"Good morning, Saito-san."

"You say it wrong _every time_ ," Philippa told Arthur reprovingly, before kissing his cheek in a surprisingly formal good morning. It occurred to Arthur that perhaps given her natural inclinations towards reserve, Saito wasn't an ideal choice of even temporary guardian.

"Uh. Sorry?" He wasn't really used, even after days of constant exposure, to having a small child dictate his actions. Philippa lowered her eyelids, assessing his sincerity, and then nodded.

"Try better," she said firmly, and went off in search of something that was presumably more child-friendly than caffeine.

"Ah," Saito continued into the kitchen area. "You have made tea, Yusuf. Thank you."

Before Eames could protest, or Arthur could say anything, Saito was drinking the tea. Eames sighed and took another drink of his cooling coffee.

"So have you settled all this nonsense about a job?" Arthur asked.

"Yes," Dom replied. "We're taking it."

"What?!"

"We're taking the job," Dom repeated, going to pour himself more coffee.

"Oh we are, are we?" Eames looked blandly interested, which meant he was absolutely fucking furious. It was fairly hard for Arthur to blame him. "Who's we, Dominic?"

"Don't start," Dom said, bending down to extract Philippa from a cupboard. "Pip, there's no magic hidden cereal in there. Eat the cornflakes, or I'll make you toast instead, okay?"

" _Dom_ —"

"It's not a problem."

"You can't just –"

" _Hey_. It's getting a coffee-making failsafe for a cafe owner. Because Ari wants to have a choice of cafes. I over-reacted, it's all good." Dom was being patient again, which would have been a further irritation except that he so transparently _meant_ it.

"You're kidding," Arthur said blankly.

"No. Really." Ariadne assured him. "Two small businesses in France. You know the places just down from...Was it your second apartment? The one that melted?"

"They can afford to hire us?"

"Well...actually no...but Saito is interested in the secret as well. He's thinking of going into competition with Starbucks."

Which was the point at which Arthur unwisely looked at Eames, and Eames put his head down on the table and just made death-noises that might have been amusement but were more likely to be 'why, dear sweet fucking Christ, is this my life?'

"And you have broken him just with looking," Saito said, taking what was now his tea and wandering off to do something that was more valuable with his time than watching Eames give up on life. "Definitely impressive."

"Fuck you," Eames said into the wrecked newspaper.

"Not on offer!" Saito called back with alarming alacrity.

"Ha," said Cobb, but Arthur chose to believe he was talking about the fact Philippa had found the cornflakes.

**

It wasn't until after lunch that Ariadne finally managed to corner him alone. And it was him, because apparently in a contest between him and Eames, he was more apt to 'spill his guts'.

Only not so much.

"Come on, Arthur. You have to tell me." Ariadne had apparently had too much caffeine or sugar, or possibly both, because she was bouncing excitedly while she grilled him.

"No, really Ariadne, I don't." Arthur said patiently, waiting for her to run down or lose interest or maybe just go away.

"No, but, you've got to fill me in on this, because you all lived here? I mean, you have _got_ to tell me what that was like, was it all –"

"Ari, it was really _dull_ , okay? Not the learning dreamshare, obviously, but the rest of it? Seriously. It was boring. It's not even a story. It's not an _anecdote_ , it's just – why are you looking at me like that?"

"Uh, mostly because I'm now imagining the look on Eames's face when I tell him you two falling for each other was dull, because that's going to be really awesome and he's going to go bang and hit the ceiling?" Ariadne suggested.

"No, because he'll know you're just winding him up." Arthur assured her.

And he would know that, because he was Eames and...okay he believed that Mal had incepted him while he was awake so he wasn't all-knowing but this, Arthur was fairly certain, he would figure out.

"Pleeeeeeease, Arthur."

"Oh, Christ. We all stayed here...like a lot. Eames had James's room and I stayed in what was going to be Philippa's. That's really it. We worked. We tried things out. Mal used us for guinea pigs. I built things and Eames amused us by impersonating archetypes." He rolled his eyes. "What the fuck else do you want to know?"

"And Dom?" Ariadne asked in a small voice.

"Eh?"

"You said what you three did, but Dom?" Why was she pushing him on this?

"You couldn't quantify Dom." It was true. "He was brilliant in too many ways, it was – he was the first extractor, I mean, I swear to God Eames wanted to steal him as much as the PASIV, he was just – fuck, Ari, I know you think you've got some kind of inside line on him after limbo, but truth is? No-one does. Most you can hope for is getting what he's going _after_ , never from, and even then –"

"Mal did." Ariadne was still quiet.

"Yeah. Mal did. I did, sometimes. Eames just liked him, gave working with him one-on-one a go for a time, then he and Mal found each other in the dreamscape and that was better, so he never tried anything else." Just liking him. _Bruv_ , Eames had called him, a Londoner's casual brotherhood, offered freely back then and accepted with Dom's usual, long-lost, mad joy.

Oh God, all the things Mal had cost them!

Ariadne nodded, a sad look in her eye, "But tell me about Eames. He tried to steal a PASIV?"

"He did." Arthur nodded. "It was all for the government back then, you know? Army developed and controlled. That's how we all got involved. Dom and Mal were civilian consultants and I was a volunteer for the program. "

"You were in the Army?"

"Surprised?" Arthur asked a bit dryly.

"Um, yeah, because – you know. You kissed me, and – um. Men? You? Army?"

"The rules did actually include don't _ask_ ," Arthur pointed out. He was definitely not going into that particular minefield with Ariadne's too-curious attendance.

"Yeah, but –"

"Ari, I didn't want a relationship. Like you said yourself, I suck at them. I was happy enough with what I had, it was fine. But the dreaming – that made things different, we were all being used, and I couldn't cope. Mal got me out."

"How did she do that?" Ariadne leaned forward.

"I never really knew." Arthur shrugged. "She had lots of contacts though. And there was Miles, who I think knows everyone but God and even that I'm not sure about."

"So you got out on a Section Eight?"

"No. It was an Honourable Discharge with due thanks for the sacrifices made in the line of duty." He looked off into the distance. "I owe them a lot."

"The Army?" Ariadne blinked. "Or –"

"And that, sweetheart, would be the end of question time as you've decreed it. Go and hassle Dom if you want more. Or actually, go to Saito, he probably knows things Arthur here doesn't." Eames sounded perfectly friendly, but his eyes were hard, and Ariadne, despite making a face at him, still nodded and got to her feet.

"I wasn't prying, Eames," she said, soft and persuasive.

"You really were," Eames pointed out. "Look. New world, yeah? You don't need to know. Or ask." He half-grinned at the last. "Settle for the facts – we've known Dom a long time, we both knew Mal, life's different. Now bugger off and be curious somewhere else."

"Thank you," Arthur said quietly as he watched her leave.

Eames sat down and put his arm around Arthur, drawing him closer. It was a comforting feeling now, unlike it had been at the Wilshire, even if Eames was still too warm to be initially acceptable and he was still awkwardly heavy when he did that, it was now safe and grounding and more than a bit arousing, and he was still _himself_ , and Arthur figured he would probably always love that. "You know, she's not Philippa. She's an adult and she needs to know that there are just some questions we won't answer."

"I don't really mind talking about that time, you know?" Arthur said quietly. "Not with you, or Dom, anyway, but she wasn't there and she's so very young."

Eames nodded, kissing Arthur on the temple, a given right now that was still an odd shock of pleasure to feel. "I know. You don't, never have, but I know. 'S okay, I know that. It's just...not with Ariadne, yeah? Private for you, too personal. And you're right, in a way – there's stuff you don't have to tell us two, 'less you feel like it, need to say it out loud or something, 'cos – we know."

And that was it, really, and maybe one day they wouldn't feel that way. One day when they were old and grey and Philippa had graduated from college and wanted to know, really know, about her mother, he might be able to bring up all the old stories – stories about amazing cooking and tying ties and Dom sleeping on people and how Mal had given them all the space to learn to trust themselves (but never how she had also been the one who destroyed that ability, Pip would never carry that particular burden of knowledge) – but not now.

Now was just the time for this...being held and thinking about the silliest job they'd ever envisioned pulling and being allowed to love and be loved. It had been a long time coming.

Maybe it was better for having taken so long.

"Can we just leave?" Arthur asked quietly, because this was what he had wanted, being able to be honest himself as well as having honesty given, and it wasn't so much of a risk, in the end, because he'd finally understood that nothing was going to change. "I mean, we can say it's for research, whatever, but can we just –"

"Yeah." And Arthur didn't need to even wonder why Eames's voice had lowered and thickened, because he knew that it was the same for him; that overnight all the moments of wondering _what if_ had become sure and certain facts. "Course we can."

**

The rest of the day was spent in that random state of relaxation that only occurs between two people who have known each other a very long time. It was familiar enough to be comfortable and yet, still new enough to be interesting. A drive down the coast, backtracking part of Arthur's early morning trail, only this time he got to enjoy it and actually see the ocean well lit and sparkling. They stopped for lunch when they got hungry and talked, talked, talked about whatever they damn well pleased, cleared the air, shared things, snarked and argued over ideas just the way they always had and then laughed, laughed, laughed about everything – Ariadne and Yusuf (who Eames claimed would be shagging before the year was out, Arthur was still fairly sure it was going to be Dom she chose), Dom and his children (who were, they agreed, creative geniuses who would pick up dreamshare before they reached puberty if given the chance...and how to keep them from taking that chance) and Saito...and how much they now owed him.

And Eames sometimes disengaged from the conversation to people-watch, storing up little gestures that would make up some perfect dream-persona days or weeks or maybe even years from now – but he never stopped listening, and Arthur, over one small conversational interlude, learned that he could trust that odd half-attention as making him the most important person there, and stayed strangely unoffended.

It was long past suppertime (Italian at some place that Arthur had only read about but that lived up to its reputation) and after dark when they got back to the hotel. The message waiting light on their phone was lit and blinking at them reproachfully.

"Dom, it's Dom, has to be," Eames said, and he was sunburned in odd stripes in the way only the English could manage, even after years of exposure to the African sun, and he was frowning in his own odd way that creased horizontal lines into his forehead, and he looked as he would when he was forty and fifty and probably always, and Arthur, if he got it right, would get to see all those changes and all those years, and couldn't bring himself to be so sentimental and idiotic as to say it out loud, and kissed him instead.

He wasn't a child, and it wasn't his first love, and it sure as hell wasn't his first moment of desire, but it was the first time he'd ever thought it might be promising more than he could give, and it burned with more than the sun's leftover sting on the skin of his chapped lips to kiss like that, as though there _were_ words for Eames to chase out of him, to keep and steal and possess.

But it wasn't like that kiss from the night before, too frantic and miserable and disbelieving to allow for words, there was kindness to it, and laughter that wasn't hard and unhappy and too fast, and Eames didn't chase words from him, he said "Arthur," he said "Oh," he said nothing and breathed, warm and strange and new and remembered all together, against Arthur's throat, and he made no disguise of wanting, and Arthur didn't press the button on the answering machine.

Instead he worked at other buttons, sliding them from their buttonholes, calmly and easily in between the soft, wet kisses they shared. Shirts slipped lightly off shoulders this time around, dropping gently to the floor and disregarded as skin moved against skin, sharing warmth and excitement.

Arthur, used to quick and shameless and later unspoken, was made and unmade all over again by the way Eames revelled in the touch of hands, the press of an arm in something that Arthur thought of as too awkward and somehow wasn't, the brush of chest hair and the warmth of skin and the thicker hair below that was somehow hotter even in its insensate lack of nerves. Eames, who gloried in a wealth of skin-hunger that Arthur had never allowed himself, and openly loved each second of it, who would go to his knees without bartering and because he wanted to, and suck and lick and swallow not from wanting to gain the upper hand, but because it had never occurred to him that it could be bartered or used; to him loving was easier in the flesh than it ever could be from the heart, and he had never needed to show otherwise.

"I should –" Arthur tried, brought down against the door, boneless and fumbling, and Eames laughed into his mouth — _that's how I taste, God,_ , Arthur thought, letting him lick in past his teeth – and Eames took his hand, slid his fingers between Arthur's, brought about unforgettable mimicry, fast-slow and a quick cupping hold, little twists and the slickness of pre-come, and Arthur was moving his hand on his own as Eames's whole body went tense and slack at once, and he started to make up his own movements as he went along, until Eames cried out and clamped his mouth down over Arthur's collarbone, trying not to yell and failing.

And later, after sun and heat and sex had all taken their due, they lay in bed wrapped around each other in loose and languid satiation, Arthur tucked against Eames's shoulder because (according to Eames) his own was far too bony for comfort.

"'M surprised the phone didn't ring," he murmured, scrubbing his chin lightly against the skin beneath him.

"What's that then?"

"The phone..." Arthur yawned.

"You c'n call in the morning..."

"Yeah," he agreed, drifting off to sleep. He felt as though he hadn't actually slept in _years_.

Later, half-woken by a phone that seemed like part of his not-dreaming, he thought he heard Eames saying things that belonged to Mal, except he didn't call her darling-Mal, he called her Dom-love, hey, you okay, he asked, okay there, you fine, Dom? and it wasn't Mal's laugh that soothed him back into sleep, it was Dom's fast talking, idea upon idea pouring out from some untold infinity, and Eames's humming agreement, sounds so familiar they couldn't be real, because they belonged to the past.

He woke the next morning spooned up behind Eames, legs tangled and one hand flat over his heartbeat. He kissed the bare shoulder in front of him, just because it was there, and then chuckled. It was a better morning than he'd had in a very long time. Solid hours of sleep with no restless awakenings at three in the –

"Fuck!"

"Mmmm...let me get my eyes open, and the answer is yes...."

"No...well, not no to that but just no because I didn't wake up, Eames."

"Feel awake to me," Eames slurred, and pressed his hips back in a casual roll against him.

"But I didn't wake up," he repeated, suddenly afraid, and then realised that the room was dark, it was completely dark in a way that not only curtains could achieve, and –

"Fuck!"

"Yeah, no, yeah, later, wanna _sleep_ ," Eames said, and he was starting to sound cross, which was pretty understandable, because sleep was a rare commodity for anyone in dreamshare, and he had been _out_ , just seconds before – and then he sort of _slammed_ awake, his heartrate not increasing under Arthur's hand but getting harder, and both his hands closed over Arthur's still flattened one, his breathing coming out of slow soft imperceptibility and into deep waking shudders. "Sorry, forgot, hey..." he said, oddly gentle in comparison with his alert body, his voice still heavy with a sleep his limbs had already moved past, and rolled over.

"But I didn't...and what if...what if..."

"Not going anywhere."

"But I heard her. I heard you and Dom and Mal. And she was talking...."

"W's dream," Eames said sleepily, already falling back into long breaths, his body heavy beside Arthur as he relaxed out of the strange night-time coherency Arthur had seen so many times (but never at its start, only in full effect as Eames stumbled out of his room and peered at him through the odd blue light of the television, trying to assess what was happening). He yawned, apparently secure in the knowledge that nothing terrible was about to happen, and let his head roll to the side on the pillow, eyes slitted into a kind of smile that didn't quite touch his mouth. "All'kay, 's fine, too early, hm?"

"Fuck..." Arthur was sitting up now, his hands scrabbling for the light switch and then his pants, clawing at the pocket to find his totem. He didn't care how much he disturbed Eames, right at that second, as long as he could convince himself he wasn't in the damn dreamshare or inventing scenarios to console his own tired mind.

"Fuck, yeah, no shit, what, what are you, why, light, ow," Eames agreed, sounding a lot less sleepy if no more coherent, and a good deal more annoyed. "What –"

"I have to _check_ ," Arthur said, irritable and desperate at once, memories and uncertainty itching under his skin. "I – Mal – I heard –"

"Okay, no, and that is actually _it_ ," Eames said, suddenly furious and very, very awake and sitting up beside him in one quick movement. "Fucking hell, Arthur. You want me to believe Mal didn't manage to incept me while I was awake, yeah?"

Arthur's hands stilled, clenched around the die, and he blinked into the dim light beyond the lamp. "Yes?"

"So tell me. How did she manage to do it to you?"

"But it's not...it's not..." Arthur began. "I heard her...and I just want to be sure."

"You're not sure?" Eames scowled. "Mal is _dead_ , Arthur. You went to her funeral. I sent her the contents of every fucking florist's shop in the area, Jesus, Dom killed her all over again in limbo, how much more sure do you bloody well need to _be_?"

"No...I mean, yes, I know that but..." Arthur looked down at his clenched fist. He could feel the die there, the corners digging into his palm, his fingers. "It's three a.m. I want to know you're here."

Eames dropped his head onto Arthur's shoulder, and his breath was cold as he inhaled. Then he said, utterly inflectionlessly, "You know I'm here. But you need something to prove it? Okay. There's something not even a dream could tell you. Your mind wouldn't invent this or suspect it to trick you, because it's too bloody insane, no projection could manage this one, and it's nothing anyone knows, it something even I don't – fuck." He breathed for a moment, a little too quickly and too tense for comfort, warm-cold, inhale-exhale anger-misery – and Christ, if this wasn't real, Arthur really _did_ have problems with what his mind could come up with, because he couldn't imagine wanting anyone to feel any of this in a thousand years, particularly not because of him having a descent into total idiocy, God – and then Eames said, hard and fast, " _I paid that lawyer._ I don't – I didn't know if Dom was going to be arrested or not, but I paid him to say so and make sure Dom knew to get the fuck out, and I paid for two tickets and I — you both got out. And I was right, so, it wasn't a good thing to do, 'cause – James an' Pip, they got left, and I know that was wrong, but. I still did it. And don't you ever fucking dare tell me I'm not here again, not when I —"

"You? But I thought...No, I guess I never thought we were anything but just lucky." God, Eames had done that? He hadn't even been sure at the time that Eames had even known what had happened until afterwards.

"Miles contacted me. He didn't know where I was, but he knew how to reach me if there was an emergency."

Of course, Miles. Miles who knew everyone and had probably taught them all at one time or another. Miles who would have a shit load of explaining to do because he knew, he fucking knew, just how hard Arthur had tried to track Eames down during those first few months.

"I'm sorry..." Arthur whispered. "It's not you that I don't trust, really, it's myself...I...good things don't happen, Eames, not to me." And wasn't it strange that he was the one saying that, when he had always thought it was Eames who believed that exact same thing?

Or maybe not so strange. They'd always had the weirdest things imaginable in common, after all.

"What, I'm not a good thing, I didn't happen years back – no, stop, we're not doing this, okay? I'm the one who runs, and look, I'm not, yeah? I'm still here."

Which he was, he was there and he was sleep-warm and still a bit annoyed, and he was pressed up against Arthur in a strange almost-embrace, and somehow that didn't help with believing this was real, not one fraction, because it was too close to what he wanted, what he _needed_ , and no, that never fucking happened, except when he was really dreaming, undrugged and about to wake up to a world of not having things.

"You want to roll the die? That help?" Arthur was being fucking well _soothed_ , and he didn't even have the energy to resent it. "Good things happen, okay? You just have to know they're good, you just have to figure it out, and we did. We did. We got there." Eames kissed the back of his neck. "We did, you and me, we did, come on, you need me to say it, sofa thief?"

"I don't need to –"

"No, you're _scared_ to, Arthur, and that's not like you. It's weighted, darling, I know that, so just let it fly like Caesar and if it falls right you're all set..."

"Fine. Fine. I will." And he rolled it, almost threw it really, onto the bedside table. But before it stilled, before it rolled to that perfect four, he turned away, leaned into Eames and kissed him, because that was better than being proved right and wrong and fucking well _awake_ by some stupid white dots on a tiny red cube.

" _Couch_ ," Arthur said into the kiss, because he could risk that even in reality. "Couch, not sofa."

Eames actually bit his tongue, when he said that, or possibly _for saying_ that, which really fucking hurt and wasn't something even a dreamscape could conjure, and for some reason his actually being real enough to get annoyed – because in dreams he never did that, he never did anything that wasn't bland and a little detached and not particularly involved on his own part, he was just there as a support who didn't need anything himself, and before now, he had always been what Arthur _thought_ he wanted, not really himself, because even Arthur's mind at its admittedly pretty good best couldn't manage to create what Eames was like when he was wrapped up in actually giving a damn for another person – and that, stupidly, that angry caring was what made Arthur fall apart.

And, like the first time they had sex, the good thing about it was that it was over with quickly. The _best_ thing, though, however demented, the best thing was that Eames didn't let go when he stopped, and he didn't say a damn thing throughout, and he held on even when Arthur hit him for being a complete fuckup who'd rather buy tickets to New Zealand for two people he wasn't speaking to than say three words out loud.

He made up for it by saying them again and again, even when Arthur told him to stop (and didn't mean it).

 _I love you. I love you. I love you._

And, at the last, the three words that meant even more –

"I'm still here."


End file.
